'Wyatt Earp' was better
I have both films, and "Wyatt Earp" is by far the better presentation of the real guy, even though some license is taken with historical accuracy.
The genuine Earp was no hero (a'la Hugh O'Brien's version) and maybe no villain, and it was he and his brothers who enforced early gun control laws in Dodge and Tombstone. This made it far easier to deal with drunken cowpokes and simply rack up arrests for which they were paid a nominal percentage of the fines.
John H. "Doc" Holliday was a lot of things, but historians are challenging whether he was as prolific a killer as Hollywood made him out to be. Quaid's performance was, IMHO, more accurate than Kilmer's and both of them stole the films they were in.
Quaid's line: "What's wrong with me? What have you got? I'm dying of tuberculosis, everybody I know hates me, I sleep with the nastiest whore in Kansas and every morning I wake up...blah blah"
Costner's reply goes over nearly everyone's head: "Not everybody hates you" Translation: "Everything else you just said is true. Get over it."
As for John Ford: He made some good westerns, but his problem wasn't listening to Wyatt Earp, it was listening to historian Stuart Lake, who "invented" the Wyatt legend, and appears now in retrospect to have been completely fooled by Wyatt or completely full of B.S., or perhaps a lot of both. Ford's OK corral gunfight in "Clementine" was so off base that it's not worth watching. Here's water in your rotgut:
At the time, Old Man Clanton was already dead.
Finn Clanton wasn't there.
Billy Clanton was there, and he got killed.
Ike Clanton survived.
Morgan Earp was very much alive and in the gunfight and was wounded.
Doc Holliday survived (he died of TB at Glennwood Springs, CO six years later) and he was not a surgeon as Ford portrayed, but a dentist.
James Earp didn't get murdered by anybody, including the Clantons.
The court reports and reports in the Tombstone Epitaph about the trial following the gunfight are remarkable testaments to RKBA and the facts of the case. This was clearly a feud between warring families, one of which consisted of rustlers and murderers, and the other which consisted of gamblers and would-be entrepreneurs who wore badges.
There is growing historical support for the actual existence of a "Buntline Special" with a 10-inch barrel that Earp carried in a special pocket in his overcoat. He may have indeed used this in the fight.
Both westerns were good shoot-em-ups, but others here are right about "Wyatt Earp" lending far more to character development than "Tombstone." You got to see Wyatt as a youth, how he changed from an eager kid into a very somber killer, and he did kill quite a bit after Morgan's murder in 1882. The only let-down in "Earp" was that the characters of the bad guys were not as fleshed out. Curly Bill Brocius was far more fun in "Tombstone" (thanks to Powers Boothe) and Tombstone gave life to Johnny Ringo where he was just pretty much an "extra" in Costner's film.
"Wyatt Earp" had by far the better music score. And it appears a real hot scene between Wyatt and Josie was trimmed from "Tombstone" ... and Dana Delaney is the more lovely of the two Josies.
Russell had the better moustache...closer to Wyatt's real broom.
Costner had the better character down pat, and it is very unfair that he got panned for it.
And Russell's film had Chuck Heston in a far-too small cameo. I knew Heston from the NRA. Can't beat that.
Best lines:
"My mother told me, 'Never put off til' tomorrow, people you can kill today'."
"Why Johnny Ringo. You look like somebody just walked over your grave."
