The Inaccurate Depiction of the O.K. Corral Gunfight

In spite of their lovely and sometimes breathtaking cinematographic appeal, the films “Tombstone” and “Gunfight At The O.K. Corral” are inaccurate and inexact in terms of their depiction of the shootout involving the lawman Wyatt Earp. The first and foremost problem with these two films is that the alleged gunfight did not happen at O.K. Corral but near C. S. Fly’s photography studio, a location that was unnoticed by these two dramatized docudramas.

On top of that, it is worth observing and considering the fact that the real event was short, stretching for only about 30 seconds, easily preventing the prolonged standoff depicted in the two films. Secondly, Tombstone tries to depict Tombstone as a kind of a no-man’s land, where no true regulation or law existed. However, these assumptions are preconditioned on the blatant disregard for the little fact that the town of Tombstone had prescriptive law ordinances against carrying a gun. It was this law that was defied by the Earp brothers, their ally Holiday, and the rest who attempted to disarm “The Cowboys”.

Kurt Russell and Bill Paxton may feature in one and Gunfight … is one of the classics of the Western movie genre. Being part of the century-old Pop culture, it reconfirms that cinema, in its most gruesome way, should render reality in a way that is even more dramatized than it truly is no matter how unappealing such an insistence on sensationalism could be for the majority of Americans weaned at the age of majority on the history of the Wild West.