In an old-school Twitter moment akin to The Dress, this weekend saw the app go to war over a surprisingly divisive question: Who is hotter, young Al Pacino, or young Robert De Niro?
Posted by writer Ashley Reese, this poll stemmed from a conversation she was having at a wedding. At first glance, it’s a pretty simple question that most people could answer in seconds. But therein lies the problem.
Since De Niro and Pacino are inescapable figures for generations of filmgoers, most of our opinions are set in stone. And as it turns out, the split between Pacino lovers and De Niro stans is precisely 50/50—a hilarious result after more than 277,000 people weighed in on the viral poll.
As several commenters pointed out, a crucial issue here is that each actor represents a different flavor of hotness. There’s a lot more context than a choice between, say, Chris Hemsworth and Chris Evans.
Both Pacino and De Niro were at peak beauty around the same time: The mid-1970s, when they starred in The Godfather Part II. But while De Niro is perhaps more classically handsome—and has a dimply charm that served him well into the warmer, more comedic roles of his later years—Pacino benefits from a chaotic, dangerous energy that caters to different tastes. (This also explains why vintage De Niro and Pacino were paired up in Tumblr‘s imaginary homoerotic Scorsese movie Goncharov last year, btw.)
To add an extra layer of absurdity here, the hot boomer actor poll went viral on the same night as Succession‘s election episode, “America Decides.” So along with people joking that the Pacino/De Niro poll attracted better turnout than real elections, there were a lot of Succession crossover jokes.
As the poll closed (mid Succession, we might add!), Reese posted a screencap showing Robert De Niro with a 0.1% margin over Al Pacino—although if you just look at the poll on regular Twitter, it shows a 50/50 split. An appropriately contentious result.
