Young De Niro & Pacino Hotness Debate Takes Over Twitter

A new debate took over the internet this weekend, and it's one for the ages -- who was hotter ... young Robert De Niro or young Al Pacino??? Of course, everyone's torn!

The question was posed by a Twitter user named Ashley Reese, whose tweet about this has garnered over 5 million views ... and a crap ton of responses. Those replies include several photos of De Niro and Pacino in their prime -- and it sure makes for some good content.

She openly asked 59k followers ... "At a wedding and having a big debate rn. Please vote. Who was hotter?" This was thrown up as a poll, BTW ... and the people have spoken.

With about 7 hours left to go (meaning you can still vote, even now) ... the Twitter-verse seems to think Al takes the cake -- but only by a slim margin. Nearly 130,000 people have voted, and about 51% of them think AP was the greater looker ... Bob's got around 48%.

While it seems Al's got the edge, there's a strong case for RDN ... whom, you could argue, was a tad more handsome for longer. But as far as who was the runaway smoke show in their prime -- it seems like Don Corleone's the favorite. The poller certainly thinks so.

Each guy was a heartthrob in their day ... especially Al in the '70s, who was on fire with a string of great movies that put his good looks on display -- 'The Godfather' flicks, obviously, but also ... "Dog Day Afternoon," "Serpico," "Bobby Deerfield," "...And Justice for All," etc.

Bob, by comparison, also had several standout hits in the '70s -- "Taxi Driver," "G2," "The Deer Hunter" -- ... but went on to transform himself time and again in several films into the '80s and '90s ("Raging Bull" and "Cape Fear" come to mind) where he was looking pretty hunky.

Mind you, this isn't a debate about who the better actor is ... that's one nobody will ever be able to agree on, as both artists are titans in their own right. This is purely on attractiveness.

At the end of the day, both dudes were great looking ... but we suppose it boils down to your own cup of tea. Al had more of an artsy and somewhat soft-spoken allure about him ... meanwhile, Bob had more of the classic man vibe radiating from head to toe.

To each their own. Naturally, we gotta ask ourselves ... who'd you rather in a perfect world?