300: "Give them nothing! But take from them everything! Tonight we dine in hell!"
Films based on the siege of the Alamo. In the John Wayne movie The Alamo (1960) the women and children are given safe passage. The men will stay and fight to the death. Someone suggests that Jocko be allowed to go since his wife, Nell, is blind and who will protect and support her? Then Nell steps forward (pretty brave for a blind person with all the horses) and says "Oh, no you don't! Why Jocko is more of a man than any of you and you can't send him away like that. He has the same right as you to stay and fight." And, no, despite what you might expect, Jocko doesn't wang her on the head with a shovel and explain she's having one of her spells. No, Jocko, volunteered by his wife, stays and dies.
In Alatriste final scene the Tercio Español decides not to surrender even when they are as screwed as they can be.
PFC Hudson, Bill Paxton's memorable character from Aliens started out as a self-proclaimed "ultimate badass", before giving us the quote "Game over, man! Game over!". However, at the very end, when the Aliens burst into the complex and the few survivors are in a very bad position, Hudson's response is to flip out and go down fighting. Pretty badass for somebody who five minutes ago was panicking.
When the Marines first enter the complex, one of them name-drops the trope after observing the Colonists' breached defenses.
At the climax of Avengers: EndgameIron Man and Thor are unconscious. Hawkeye is in some underground tunnel running for his life. Hulk, Rocket, War Machine, and Ant-Man are trapped under the ruins of the Avengers base. It's Captain America alone with half his shield against Thanos and his entire army. It seems like this trope is about to play out, until a familiar voice speaks into his ear and says "on your left".
Bataan: The climax of the film is one of these as the last five US soldiers face off against a much stronger force of Japanese soldiers. In the last couple minutes the last remaining soldier digs his own grave, hops in it, and resumes his last stand as the credits roll.
In Black Hawk Down, Delta Force snipers Gary Gordon and Randy Shughart drop on their own to defend the second Blackhawk crash site. They went in knowing they had no backup and no escape plan, and they fight to the death. When they inevitably get overwhelmednote They were the best of the best of Delta Force, but two against more than a hundred is literally impossible odds, the first, Gary Gordon, goes down to an errant bullet. Shughart retrieves Gordon's weapon, goes back to the pilot they're trying to protect and hands the weapon to him, and then he goes back fighting until he's shot in the arm. Unable to use his rifle, he switches to his pistol before getting shot in his other arm. He still manages to get one more kill before he's gunned down and killed himselfnote There's no official count of their efficacy in their last stand, but it's estimated that Gordon and Shughart managed to kill dozens of enemy combatants coming from three different directions. The pilot, Mike Durant, survives long enough to be captured rather than killed. Gordon and Shughart both received the Medal of Honor.
The Charge at Feather River: Having been pursued by the Cheyenne every since their raid on the camp to rescue Anne and Jennie, the Guardhouse Brigade finally run out of places to run at Feather River. They dig into the bank and prepare to hold off Thunder Hawk and his braves for as long as possible.
In the film (and the novel), wounded Robert Jordan stays behind with a machine gun to hold off the advancing troops so the others (and the woman he loves) can escape.
However, it's also heavily subverted by El Sordo's death earlier in the story. After being tracked down by nationalist cavalry, he and his band of guerillas are eventually cornered on top of a hill. At first it seems that they're set up to bring as many of them down as possible (and that is Sordo's intention), but they're denied the opportunity when the nationalists simply kill them all with an airstrike. An aversion to War Is Glorious if there ever was one.
Jason Nesmith/"Peter Quincy Taggart" in Galaxy Quest is, if less eloquent, much more succinct: "Never give up — Never surrender!" Though when he actually means it, it's not the human race that's in danger, but the Thermians.
In Garden Of Evil 1954 two men and a woman (the last survivors of their party) are escaping and one man stays behind to hold them off. When the woman asks why anyone has to make this sacrifice she's told "Because someone has to do it. Someone has to stay behind and make sure the job gets done."
Godzilla (2014): Ford Brody at the climax. When the actively pissed-off Femuto corners him on a boat in the San Francisco Bay; with a nuclear warhead ticking away on said boat, with everyone else in Ford's military team dead, and with no hope of saving himself from certain death, Ford just coolly takes out his side-arm and gets ready to shoot.
Gran Torino, when Eastwood's character goes to confront the gang. Unique in that he came unarmed.
The Grey. Ottway stumbles into the wolves' den and, knowing he's going to die anyway, decides to go out fighting. The after-credits scene shows Ottway resting on top of the alpha wolf's corpse.
Independence Day is a big one. In fact, this trope seemed to be largely the premise of the entire film.
"We will not go quietly into the night...we will not vanish without a fight! We are going to live on! We are going to survive! Today, we celebrate our Independence Day!"
Invasion U.S.A. (1985): A villainous example. Once surrounded by the National Guard, the terrorists fight to the last man rather than surrendering to them.
Nearly happens in John Carter, where the titular character, his Love Interest, and a friend are being chased by a horde of Tharks. In a scene of epic badassery, he tells his friend to grab the Love Interest (an Action Girl herself) and take her to safety, while he alone holds off the horde (although Woola chooses to stay). He then jumps into the fray and starts hacking at the Tharks, killing dozens of them until they finally just pile on top of him. He only survives because a Helium airship arrives to scare off the surviving Tharks and provide immediate medical help. The scene is all the more memorable because it's overlayed with his memories of coming back from the American Civil War to find his wife and daughter dead and burying their bodies.
John Carter: I was too late once, I won't be again.
Khartoum depicts the futile last stand of General Charles Gordon in Africa defending the city of Khartoum from the army of the Mahdi. Effectively sent off to die by his superiors as they refused to provide any support for his mission and chose him knowing that he would go rogue rather than abandon the non-British citizens of the city.
Invoked in Kingdom of Heaven. Balian threatens Saladin by saying that if his men have to make a Last Stand, they would kill ten Saracens for every Christian Knight. Saladin immediately offers generous terms that would allow Balian to peacefully evacuate Jerusalem, which Balian accepts.
Averted, though, in that Saladin has no interest in a fight to the death, and he isn't so much intimidated by Balian's senseless bravado as he is amused by it. Consider that when Balian threatens to burn the entire city to the ground, Saladin grins and whispers, "I wonder if it would not be better if you did."
Of course, Balian's only real goal is to get the people out alive and relatively unharmed. The bravado is meant to convince Saladin that letting them surrender is a better idea than forcing a Last Stand scenario. Balian misinterprets Saladin's intentions, thinking that he wants the Christians all massacred rather than retake the city in order to appease his followers. And in revenge for the horrors the Christians inflicted when they laid siege to the city before. Saladin is insulted at the latter idea.
In the 1930 German film Die letzte Kompagnie (The Last Company), Conrad Veidt is a captain who after the defeat of Jena and Auerstedt (1806) tries to buy time for the Prussian army to make an orderly retreat by defending a mill against the advancing French with the last twelve men of his company. They all die, as does the miller's daughter who fell in love with him.
A day may come when the courage of men fails, when we forsake our friends and break all bonds of fellowship. But it is not this day. An hour of wolves and shattered shields, when the age of men comes crashing down! But it is not this day! This day we fight! By all that you hold dear on this good Earth, I bid you STAND! MEN! OF THE WEST!
Not present in Mankind's Last Stand, but the more accurate title Mankind's Small But Significant Battle would be less exciting. (A neglected outpost stumbles across, and defeats, a plot to re-supply the remnants of the alien invasion).
The Matrix Revolutions centres around the defence of the last human city of Zion against an overwhelming machine army. Eventually the humans' last gambit of retreating and collapsing their tunnels behind them fails when the machines are able to salvage one of their diggers. In response, the humans name-drop this trope as they fall back to the caves, where all the civilians are hiding, and prepare to sell their lives dearly. As it turns out, they didn't actually need to, as Neo brings an end to the war just as the sentinels reach the barricades.
None Shall Escape: When a trainload of Jews are to be deported (presumably to an extermination camp), the rabbi tells them to fight instead. They put up a valiant effort, but the Nazis massacre them all with a machine gun.
The Outpost tells the story of the Battle of Kamdesh, when the Taliban attacked an isolated Army outpost in Eastern Afghanistan. The camp itself had been explicitly compared to Custer's Last Stand even before the final attack occurred.
Pacific Rim has the governments putting their differences aside, pooling their resources, and start creating Jaegers to fight the Kaiju. The general attitude is summed up nicely in the prequel comic by Stacker Pentecost:
At the climax of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, the ravenous Kraken that's kept Jack Sparrow running scared through the whole film finally catches up. Its huge toothy maw opens, vomiting slime all over its victim (incidentally also regurgitating his missing hat.) But with all hope gone, Jack's fear vanishes too. He calmly replaces said headgear and, with a maniacal smile and eye gleam, growls "Hello, beastie!", draws his sword, and charges. Jack knows he has no witnesses. It's a moment of insanity, clarity, and raw courage all at once.
In Rocky Mountain, Barstow decides to use all his men to lure the Indians away from the mountain while Johanna, Craigie and the Union trooper escape. The greatly outnumbered Rebels ride into a box canyon and turn to fight, charging the Shoshone. During the battle, Rickey returns with a troop of Union cavalry, and Johanna tells Rickey what has happened. The cavalry attempt to save Barstow's men but are too late; all the Southerners have been killed.
Sahara (1943), both the Bogart and the Belushi versions.
The end of The Sand Pebbles has Jake Holman staying behind, pretending to be an entire squad, to cover the escape of his companions.
Scarface: Tony Montana goes on a drug-fueled killing spree against the assassins sent to execute him, gunning down nearly a dozen of them before being shredded by a hail of gunfire.
The last portion of the climactic three-way battle in Serenity looks like one of these (along with buying some time for Mal's transmission), up until the point where River takes out the Reavers. All of them.
Almost every zombie movie has a not-yet-turned infectee left behind to do one of these, such as Ed in the basement of the Winchester in Shaun of the Dead.
John Wayne's character in his very last film, The Shootist, tries to engineer one of these. After a lifetime of gunslinging, he has two things: terminal cancer, and lots of enemies. He lets a few enemies know where he'll be drinking on his birthday. To his apparent disappointment, he wins the shootout. The bartender shoots him in the back.
In Star Wars: Return of the Jedi, the Rebels go along with the idea of charging the Imperial fleet entrapping them at the Battle of Endor. The idea was that they were buying time so Han's team could knock out the Death Star's shield generator, as well as making it harder for the Death Star to one-shot their cruisers without risking some Imperial ships. Plan B, assuming they couldn't buy enough time or Han was already dead, was to damage the Imperial war machine as badly as they could in a Last Stand (with an option on punching a hole through the blockade so at least some ships could escape).
Many movies based on the Battle of the Little Bighorn, aka "Custer's Last Stand". 1941 film They Died with Their Boots On presents a completely fictional version of the Last Stand in which Custer deliberately leads his regiment to destruction in order to buy time for the Army to evacuate white civilians from the Black Hills. 1991 TV MovieSon of the Morning Star shows a far more accurate version in which the Last Stand is chaotic and short, and is brought on by Custer's own tactical errors and those of his subordinates Reno and Benteen.
Towards the end of Transformers: The Last Knight, Quintessa and the Decepticons are just about start the final stage of destroying the Earth and currently have the upper hand, Edmund Burton decides to take matters into his own hands by taking his cane, which turns out to be a Cybertronian firearm and shooting at the Decepticons with it. He did manage to deliver a few good shots before being blasted by Megatron's arm cannon.
Wake Island: Ends with the massively outnumbered and outgunned Marines on Wake Island, who have no means of escape, fighting to the last man, until they're wiped out by the Japanese. (This was fictional, as in Real Life the garrison surrendered when the battle had obviously been lost.)
The Wild Bunch ends with the gang deciding to save their friend, but as such has to face off an entire Mexican garrison.
Subverted in Zombieland Tallahassee goes into the booth at Pacific Playland, surrounded by zombies on all sides. It has all the makings of a Last Stand, complete with dramatic music as he empties round after round into the zombies, but when it cuts back to him later he's revealed to be completely unharmed, surrounded by a mass of zombie corpses.
Zulu. Based on historical events and rivaling 300 in raw badassitude. Peter Jackson specifically references Zulu in the commentary for The Two Towers, when referring to Helm's Deep. It's made even more badass by the fact that it's a rare last stand that succeeds.
