Never Surrender Trivia Quiz

Answer: Galaxy Quest

"Galaxy Quest" (1999) shares its name with the fictional TV show that the aliens, who have no concept of lying or pretending, have mistaken for "historical documents." Accordingly, they've built a real starship based on on information gleaned from the show, and now they want the original crew -- including Tim Allen, Sigourney Weaver, and Alan Rickman -- to take charge of their negotiations with their mortal enemies.

Since the original crew aren't actually intrepid explorers of outer space, things quickly go wrong. A desperate last stand, after the ship has been boarded, gives the bickering actors one shot at redemption -- and one chance to make that motto real.

Answer: The Persians

Led by their emperor, Xerxes I, the Persian army (from modern-day Iran) meant to add the bickering city-states of Greece to their realm. The suicidal stand at Thermopylae bought time for the other city-states to raise their own armies and navies, resulting in the eventual defeat of the Persians at Salamis and Plataea.

"300", based on a series of comic books by Frank Miller, did well at the box office despite its questionable historical accuracy. It did, however, repeat the Spartan king's famous response to the Persians' demand that he surrender and lay down his weapons: "Come and get them."

Answer: Independence Day

The hugely successful "Independence Day" set off a fad for movies in which large portions of the world are destroyed in gorgeous Technicolor. (The White House and the Eiffel Tower always receive particular attention in the destruction montages.) The space aliens of the movie were implacable, having no desire to negotiate or even leave any humans alive, and spent most of the movie in giant ships that were safe even from nuclear bombs.

In an often-mocked sequence, a scientist (Jeff Goldblum) and a fighter pilot (Will Smith) use a stolen alien attack craft to plant a computer virus on the mother ship. (Because the whole galaxy uses Microsoft Windows, apparently.) This virus brings down the shields on alien ships all over the world, allowing the last remaining wave of fighter pilots to find the weak spot and destroy the enemy. Soon after the speech, the president (Bill Pullman) hops into a jet himself. I just hope he found his own speech inspirational!

Answer: Marius

The movie hews closely to its source material, a 1980 musical that is based in turn on the 1862 novel by Victor Hugo. Enjolras, the leader of the student revolutionaries, dies in the final push of the attempted 1832 revolution, as it becomes clear that the people of Paris are not going to rise up with them. Gavroche, an adorable ragamuffin, is shot while scavenging for the revolutionaries. Eponine, a young woman in unrequited love with Marius, dies to save him. Marius survives the deaths of all his friends solely due to the intervention of Jean Valjean, the adoptive father of his beloved Cosette and the protagonist of the movie. The haunting song "Empty Chairs at Empty Tables" is Marius's tribute to the fallen:

"Here they dreamed about tomorrow -- but tomorrow never came."

Answer: He kills himself and his attackers with a grenade.

Neville (Will Smith) has a reason for this suicidal move: a woman and a boy are hiding inside a coal chute, and he's just given them a vial with the cure for the pandemic that created the post-humans. By destroying his attackers, he allows the others to escape with the cure - sacrificing his life and becoming a legend to the survivors of humanity.

The film was based on a 1954 book of the same name, written by Richard Matheson. The ending marks a significant departure from the book, which actually ended with Neville's realization that the post-humans (who are sort of vampiric zombies) are not mindlessly evil creatures, but people trying to build a real society. In capturing and killing them to hunt for a cure, he's become the very thing he thought he was fighting - a terrifying bedtime story for children, a legend of an outsider enemy. The original ending to the movie version (found on the DVD release) featured a similar reversal, in which Neville realizes that his attackers are actually trying to rescue his latest lab specimen. He returns the woman, and nobody dies.

Answer: Cops and criminals must work together to defend the station.

The 1976 villains are a Los Angeles gang, who have chased a vigilante citizen to the station. In 2005, the bad guys are Detroit police officers led by a corrupt captain, trying to kill a warlord prisoner before he can testify about their involvement in his schemes. In both scenarios, the officers of Precinct 13 are forced to arm the criminals on a prison bus that was diverted to the station. Cops and crooks stand shoulder-to-shoulder in a seemingly doomed effort to hold out until help can arrive. The body count is high, but both movies have a happy ending (at least, for a few survivors).

Perhaps the sole piece of cleverness in the later film is that its criminal protagonist has the same last name as the cop protagonist from the first film: Bishop, the chess piece that moves diagonally.

Answer: Firefly

The sci-fi show "Firefly" aired for only half a season in 2002, but its fan base was so devoted that Universal agreed to make the 2005 follow-on movie "Serenity". In it, our heroes uncover horrific crimes committed by the government of the interplanetary Alliance -- all in the name of the greater good, of course -- and fight terrible odds to blow the whistle. One friend and former crew member is killed well before the final showdown; another falls in the first moments of the confrontation.

But the resolution of the last stand is a beautiful moment of character growth. My tissue box always gets a good workout!

Answer: George Custer

Custer trained at the United States Military Academy in West Point, but graduated last in his class - a feat often noted by people studying his disastrous Last Stand, in which his entire command was killed in the 1876 Battle of Little Bighorn. The movie "They Died with Their Boots On" takes some interesting liberties with the story. In this version, both the victors at Little Bighorn - the Lakota Sioux, Arapaho, and Northern Cheyenne peoples - and Custer's battalion were victims of some complex dirty dealings between white politicians and white corporations. Flynn's Custer sacrifices his battalion knowingly, hoping to avert all-out war on a mission to "hell or glory. It depends on one's point of view."

This rather romanticized version of history did quite well for Warner Brothers at the time, and is still enjoyed by classic film buffs.

Answer: Hogwarts

Hogwarts, the British Isles' sole school of witchcraft and wizardry, is a focal point of the series: each of the first six books and movies corresponds to one year of Harry's time as a student there. So it's a shock for longtime fans to see the school become a war zone, a haven invaded by destruction and death.

Many beloved characters fall in the defense of Hogwarts, but surrender is never an option: rule by Voldemort would mean suffering and death for far too many.

Answer: Arwen

Arwen, the half-elf love of Aragorn (the "king" of the title), is ill in her father's home of Rivendell, but she does set useful events in motion and marries her beloved at the end of the film, which is based on the conclusion of the novels by J.R.R. Tolkien. Éowyn, a princess of the Riders of Rohan, disguises herself as a man in order to take part in the battle, and ends up slaying the Witch King. (Merry, a hobbit, assists.) And, of course, Aragorn is in the thick of things, arriving on the battlefield at the head of (no kidding!) an Army of the Dead.

It's a delight to watch the pieces come together, and a hopeless situation turn victorious. There's still the little matter of the poor hobbits at Mount Doom, however...