title: Acropolis of Athens

text: There is little doubt that a Mycenaean megaron palace stood upon the hill during the late Bronze Age. Nothing of this megaron survives except, probably, a single limestone column-base and pieces of several sandstone steps. Soon after the palace was constructed, a Cyclopean massive circuit wall was built, 760 meters long, up to 10 meters high, and ranging from 3.5 to 6 meters thick. From the end of the Helladic IIIB (1300-1200 BC) on, this wall would serve as the main defense for the acropolis until the 5th century. The wall consisted of two parapets built with large stone blocks and cemented with an earth mortar called "emplekton" (Greek: ἔμπλεκτον). The wall uses typical Mycenaean conventions in that it followed the natural contour of the terrain and its gate, which was towards the south, was arranged obliquely, with a parapet and tower overhanging the incomers' right-hand side, thus facilitating defense. There were two lesser approaches up the hill on its north side, consisting of steep, narrow flights of steps cut in the rock. Homer is assumed to refer to this fortification when he mentions the "strong-built House of Erechtheus" ("Odyssey" 7.81). At some time before the 13th century BC, an earthquake caused a fissure near the northeastern edge of the Acropolis. This fissure extended some 35 meters to a bed of soft marl in which a well was dug. An elaborate set of stairs was built and the well served as an invaluable, protected source of drinking water during times of siege for some portion of the Mycenaean period.


title: Acropolis of Athens

text: Not much is known about the architectural appearance of the Acropolis until the Archaic era. During the 7th and the 6th centuries BC, the site was controlled by Kylon during the failed Kylonian revolt, and twice by Peisistratos; each of these were attempts directed at seizing political power by "coups d'état". Apart from the "Hekatompedon" mentioned later, Peisistratos also built an entry gate or propylaea. Nevertheless, it seems that a nine-gate wall, the "Enneapylon", had been built around the acropolis hill and incorporating the biggest water spring, the "Clepsydra", at the northwestern foot.


title: Acropolis of Athens

text: A temple to "Athena Polias", the tutelary deity of the city, was erected between 570 and 550 BC. This Doric limestone building, from which many relics survive, is referred to as the "Hekatompedon" (Greek for "hundred–footed"), "Ur-Parthenon" (German for "original Parthenon" or "primitive Parthenon"), "H–Architecture" or "Bluebeard" temple, after the pedimental three-bodied man-serpent sculpture, whose beards were painted dark blue. Whether this temple replaced an older one, or just a sacred precinct or altar, is not known. Probably, the "Hekatompedon" was built where the Parthenon now stands.


title: Acropolis of Athens

text: Between 529 and 520 BC yet another temple was built by the Pisistratids, the Old Temple of Athena, usually referred to as the "Arkhaios Neōs" (ἀρχαῖος νεώς, "ancient temple"). This temple of Athena Polias was built upon the "Dörpfeld foundations", between the Erechtheion and the still-standing Parthenon. "Arkhaios Neōs" was destroyed as part of the Achaemenid destruction of Athens during the Second Persian invasion of Greece during 480–479 BC; however, the temple was probably reconstructed during 454 BC, since the treasury of the Delian League was transferred in its opisthodomos. The temple may have been burnt down during 406/405 BC as Xenophon mentions that the old temple of Athena was set afire. Pausanias does not mention it in his 2nd century AD "Description of Greece".


title: Acropolis of Athens

text: Around 500 BC the "Hekatompedon" was dismantled to make place for a new grander building, the "Older Parthenon" (often referred to as the "Pre-Parthenon", "early Parthenon"). For this reason, Athenians decided to stop the construction of the Olympieion temple which was connoted with the tyrant Peisistratos and his sons and, instead, used the Piraeus limestone destined for the Olympieion to build the Older Parthenon. In order to accommodate the new temple, the south part of the summit was cleared, made level by adding some 8,000 two-ton blocks of limestone, a foundation deep at some points, and the rest was filled with soil kept in place by the retaining wall. However, after the victorious Battle of Marathon in 490 BC, the plan was revised and marble was used instead. The limestone phase of the building is referred to as "Pre-Parthenon I" and the marble phase as "Pre-Parthenon II". In 485 BC, construction stalled to save resources as Xerxes became king of Persia and war seemed imminent.


title: Acropolis of Athens

text: The Older Parthenon was still under construction when the Persians invaded and sacked the city in 480 BC. The building was burned and looted, along with the "Ancient Temple" and practically everything else on the rock. After the Persian crisis had subsided, the Athenians incorporated many architectural parts of the unfinished temple (unfluted column drums, triglyphs, metopes, etc.) into the newly built northern curtain wall of the Acropolis, where they served as a prominent "war memorial" and can still be seen today. The devastated site was cleared of debris. Statuary, cult objects, religious offerings and unsalvageable architectural members were buried ceremoniously in several deeply dug pits on the hill, serving conveniently as a fill for the artificial plateau created around the classic Parthenon. This "Persian debris" was the richest archaeological deposit excavated on the Acropolis by 1890.


title: Acropolis of Athens

text: After winning at Eurymedon during 468 BC, Cimon and Themistocles ordered the reconstruction of the southern and northern walls of the Acropolis. Most of the major temples, including the Parthenon, were rebuilt by order of Pericles during the so-called Golden Age of Athens (460–430 BC). Phidias, an Athenian sculptor, and Ictinus and Callicrates, two famous architects, were responsible for the reconstruction.


title: Acropolis of Athens

text: During 437 BC, Mnesicles started building the Propylaea, a monumental gate at the western end of the Acropolis with Doric columns of Pentelic marble, built partly upon the old propylaea of Peisistratos. These colonnades were almost finished during 432 BC and had two wings, the northern one decorated with paintings by Polygnotus. About the same time, south of the Propylaea, building started on the small Ionic Temple of Athena Nike in Pentelic marble with tetrastyle porches, preserving the essentials of Greek temple design. After an interruption caused by the Peloponnesian War, the temple was finished during the time of Nicias' peace, between 421 BC and 409 BC.


title: Acropolis of Athens

text: Construction of the elegant temple of Erechtheion in Pentelic marble (421–406 BC) was by a complex plan which took account of the extremely uneven ground and the need to circumvent several shrines in the area. The entrance, facing east, is lined with six Ionic columns. Unusually, the temple has two porches, one on the northwest corner borne by Ionic columns, the other, to the southwest, supported by huge female figures or Caryatids. The eastern part of the temple was dedicated to Athena Polias, while the western part, serving the cult of the archaic king Poseidon-Erechtheus, housed the altars of Hephaestus and Voutos, brother of Erechtheus. Little is known about the original plan of the interior which was destroyed by fire during the first century BC and has been rebuilt several times.


title: Acropolis of Athens

text: During the same period, a combination of sacred precincts including the temples of "Athena Polias", Poseidon, Erechtheus, Cecrops, Herse, Pandrosos and Aglauros, with its "Kore Porch" (Porch of the Maidens) or "Caryatids' balcony" was begun. Between the temple of Athena Nike and the Parthenon, there was the Sanctuary of Artemis Brauronia (or the Brauroneion), the goddess represented as a bear and worshipped in the deme of Brauron. According to Pausanias, a wooden statue or "xoanon" of the goddess and a statue of Artemis made by Praxiteles during the 4th century BC were both in the sanctuary.


title: Acropolis of Athens

text: Behind the Propylaea, Phidias' gigantic bronze statue of Athena Promachos ("Athena who fights in the front line"), built between 450 BC and 448 BC, dominated. The base was high, while the total height of the statue was . The goddess held a lance, the gilt tip of which could be seen as a reflection by crews on ships rounding Cape Sounion, and a giant shield on the left side, decorated by Mys with images of the fight between the Centaurs and the Lapiths. Other monuments that have left almost nothing visible to the present day are the Chalkotheke, the Pandroseion, Pandion's sanctuary, Athena's altar, Zeus Polieus's sanctuary and, from Roman times, the circular temple of Augustus and Rome.


title: Acropolis of Athens

text: During the Hellenistic and Roman periods, many of the existing buildings in the area of the Acropolis were repaired due to damage from age and occasionally war. Monuments to foreign kings were erected, notably those of the Attalid kings of Pergamon Attalos II (in front of the NW corner of the Parthenon), and Eumenes II, in front of the Propylaia. These were rededicated during the early Roman Empire to Augustus or Claudius (uncertain) and Agrippa, respectively. Eumenes was also responsible for constructing a stoa on the South slope, not unlike that of Attalos in the Agora below.


title: Acropolis of Athens

text: During the Julio-Claudian period, the Temple of Rome and Augustus, a small, round edifice about 23 meters from the Parthenon, was to be the last significant ancient construction on the summit of the rock. Around the same time, on the North slope, in a cave next to the one dedicated to Pan since the classical period, a sanctuary was founded where the archons dedicated to Apollo on assuming office. During 161 AD, on the South slope, the Roman Herodes Atticus built his grand amphitheater or Odeon. It was destroyed by the invading Herulians a century later but was reconstructed during the 1950s.


title: Acropolis of Athens

text: During the 3rd century, under threat from a Herulian invasion, repairs were made to the Acropolis walls, and the "Beulé Gate" was constructed to restrict entrance in front of the Propylaia, thus returning the Acropolis to use as a fortress.


title: Acropolis of Athens

text: During the Byzantine period, the Parthenon was used as a church dedicated to the Virgin Mary. During the Latin Duchy of Athens, the Acropolis functioned as the city's administrative center, with the Parthenon as its cathedral, and the Propylaea as part of the Ducal Palace. A large tower was added, the "Frankopyrgos" demolished during the 19th century.


title: Acropolis of Athens

text: After the Ottoman conquest of Greece, the Parthenon was used as the garrison headquarters of the Turkish army, and the Erechtheum was turned into the governor's private harem. The buildings of the Acropolis suffered significant damage during the 1687 siege by the Venetians in the Morean War. The Parthenon, which was being used as a gunpowder magazine, was hit by artillery shot and damaged severely.


title: Acropolis of Athens

text: During subsequent years, the Acropolis was a site of bustling human activity with many Byzantine, Frankish, and Ottoman structures. The dominant feature during the Ottoman period was a mosque inside the Parthenon, complete with a minaret.


title: Acropolis of Athens

text: The Acropolis was besieged thrice during the Greek War of Independence (two sieges from the Greeks in 1821–1822 and one from the Ottomans in 1826–1827. A new bulwark named after Odysseas Androutsos was built by the Greeks between 1822 and 1825 to protect the recently rediscovered Klepsydra spring which became the sole fresh water supply of the fortress.


title: Acropolis of Athens

text: After independence, most features that dated from the Byzantine, Frankish, and Ottoman periods were cleared from the site in an attempt to restore the monument to its original form, "cleansed" of all later additions.


title: Acropolis of Athens

text: German neoclassicist architect Leo von Klenze was responsible for the restoration of the Acropolis in the 19th century, according to German historian Wolf Seidl, as described in his book "Bavarians in Greece".


title: Acropolis of Athens

text: At the beginning of the Axis occupation of Greece in 1941, German soldiers raised the Nazi German War Flag over the Acropolis. It would be taken down by Manolis Glezos and Apostolos Santas in one of the first acts of resistance. In 1944 Greek Prime Minister Georgios Papandreou arrived on the Acropolis to celebrate liberation from the Nazis.


title: Acropolis of Athens

text: The entrance to the Acropolis was a monumental gateway termed the Propylaea. To the south of the entrance is the tiny Temple of Athena Nike. At the centre of the Acropolis is the Parthenon or Temple of Athena Parthenos (Athena the Virgin). East of the entrance and north of the Parthenon is the temple known as the Erechtheum. South of the platform that forms the top of the Acropolis there are also the remains of the ancient, though often remodelled, Theatre of Dionysus. A few hundred metres away, there is the now partially reconstructed Odeon of Herodes Atticus.


title: Acropolis of Athens

text: All the valuable ancient artifacts are situated in the Acropolis Museum, which resides on the southern slope of the same rock, 280 metres from the Parthenon.


title: Acropolis of Athens

text: The Acropolis Restoration Project began in 1975 with the goal to reverse the decay of centuries of attrition, pollution, destruction from military actions, and misguided past restorations. The project included collection and identification of all stone fragments, even small ones, from the Acropolis and its slopes and the attempt was made to restore as much as possible using reassembled original material (anastylosis), with new marble from Mount Pentelicus used sparingly. All restoration was made using titanium dowels and is designed to be completely reversible, in case future experts decide to change things. A combination of cutting-edge modern technology and extensive research and reinvention of ancient techniques were used.


title: Acropolis of Athens

text: The Parthenon colonnades, largely destroyed by Venetian bombardment during the 17th century, were restored, with many wrongly assembled columns now properly placed. The roof and floor of the Propylaea were partly restored, with sections of the roof made of new marble and decorated with blue and gold inserts, as in the original. Restoration of the Temple of Athena Nike was completed in 2010.


title: Acropolis of Athens

text: A total of 2,675 tons of architectural members were restored, with 686 stones reassembled from fragments of the originals, 905 patched with new marble, and 186 parts made entirely of new marble. A total of 530 cubic meters of new Pentelic marble were used.


title: Acropolis of Athens

text: In 2021, the addition of new reinforced concrete paths to the site to improve accessibility caused controversy among archaeologists.


title: Acropolis of Athens

text: Every four years, the Athenians had a festival called the Great Panathenaea that rivaled the Olympic Games in popularity. During the festival, a procession (believed to be depicted on the Parthenon frieze) traveled through the city via the Panathenaic Way and culminated on the Acropolis. There, a new robe of woven wool ("peplos") was placed on either the statue of Athena Polias in the Erechtheum (during the annual Lesser Panathenaea) or the statue of Athena Parthenos in the Parthenon (during the Great Panathenaea, held every four years).


title: Acropolis of Athens

text: Within the later tradition of Western Civilization and classical revival, the Acropolis, from at least the mid-18th century on, has often been invoked as a critical symbol of the Greek legacy and of the glories of Classical Greece.


title: Acropolis of Athens

text: Most of the artifacts from the temple are housed today in the Acropolis Museum at the foot of the ancient rock.


title: Acropolis of Athens

text: The Acropolis is a klippe consisting of two lithostratigraphic units, the Athens schist and the overlying Acropolis limestone. The Athens schist is a soft reddish rock dating from the upper Cretaceous period. The original sediments were deposited in a river delta approximately 72 million years ago. The Acropolis limestone dates from the upper Jurassic period, predating the underlying Athens schist by about 30 million years. The Acropolis limestone was thrust over the Athens schist by compressional tectonic forces (Plate tectonics), forming a nappe or overthrust sheet. Erosion of the limestone nappe led to the eventual detachment of the Acropolis, forming the present-day feature. Where the Athens schist and the limestone meet there are springs and karstic caves. Many of the hills in the Athens region were formed by the erosion of the same nappe as the Acropolis. These include the hills of Lykabettos, Areopagus, and Mouseion. The marble utilized to construct the buildings of the Acropolis was sourced from the quarries of Mount Pentelicus, a mountain to the northeast of the city.


title: Acropolis of Athens

text: The limestone that the Acropolis is built upon is unstable because of the erosion and tectonic shifts that the region is prone to. This instability can cause rock slides that cause damage to the historic site. Various measures have been implemented to protect the site including retaining walls, drainage systems, and rock bolts. These measures work to counter the natural processes that threaten the historic site.


title: Major Arcana

text: The Major Arcana are the named or numbered cards in a cartomantic tarot pack, the name being originally given by occultists to the trump cards of a normal tarot pack used for playing card games. There are usually 22 such cards in a standard 78-card pack, typically numbered from 0 to 21 (in card playing packs, there is no 0, the unnumbered card is the Fool). The name is not used by tarot card game players.


title: Major Arcana

text: Prior to the 17th century, tarot cards were solely used for playing games and the Fool and 21 trumps were simply part of a standard card pack used for gaming and gambling. There may have been allegorical and cultural significance attached to them, but beyond that, the trumps originally had no mystical or magical import. With decks designed for card games (Tarot card games), these cards serve as permanent trumps and are distinguished from the remaining cards -- the suit cards -- which are known by occultists as the Minor Arcana.


title: Major Arcana

text: The terms "Major" and "Minor Arcana" are used in the occult, and divinatory applications of the deck as in practising Esoteric Tarot and originate with Jean-Baptiste Pitois (1811–1877), writing under the name Paul Christian.


title: Major Arcana

text: Sir Michael Dummett writes that the Fool and trump cards originally had simple allegorical or esoteric meaning, mostly originating in elite ideology in the Italian courts of the 15th century when it was invented. The occult significance began to emerge in the 18th century when Antoine Court de Gébelin, a Swiss clergyman and Freemason, published "Le Monde Primitif". The construction of the occult and divinatory significance of the tarot, and the Major and Minor Arcana, continued on from there. For example, Court de Gébelin claimed an Egyptian, kabbalistic, and divine significance of the tarot trumps; Etteilla created a method of divination using tarot; Éliphas Lévi worked to break away from the Egyptian nature of the divinatory tarot, bringing it back to the tarot de Marseilles, creating a "tortuous" kabbalastic correspondence, and even suggested that the Major Arcana represent stages of life. The Marquis Stanislas de Guaita established the Major Arcana as an initiatory sequence to be used to establish a path of spiritual ascension and evolution. In 1980 Sallie Nichols, a Jungian psychologist, wrote of the tarot as having deep psychological and archetypal significance, even encoding the entire process of Jungian individuation into the tarot trumps.


title: Major Arcana

text: These various interpretations of the Major Arcana developed in stages, all of which continue to exert significant influence on practitioners' explanations of the Major Arcana.


title: Major Arcana

text: Like the early Italian-suited packs on which they were originally based, in a cartomantic pack each Major Arcanum depicts a scene, mostly featuring a person or several people, with many symbolic elements. In many decks, each has a number (usually in Roman numerals) and a name, though not all decks have both, and some have only a picture. Every tarot deck is different and carries a different connotation with the art, however most symbolism remains the same. The earliest, pre-cartomantic, decks bore unnamed and unnumbered pictures on their "trionfi" or trumps (probably because a great many of the people using them at the time were illiterate), and the order of cards was not standardized. Strength is traditionally the eleventh card and Justice the eighth, but the influential Rider–Waite Tarot switched the position of these two cards in order to make them a better fit with the astrological correspondences worked out by the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, under which the eighth card is associated with Leo and the eleventh with Libra. Today many decks use this numbering, particularly in the English-speaking world. Both placements are considered valid.


title: Major Arcana

text: By the 19th century, the Tarot was being claimed as a "Bible of Bibles", an esoteric repository of all the significant truths of creation. The trend was started by prominent freemason and Protestant cleric Antoine Court de Gébelin who suggested that the tarot had an ancient Egyptian origin, and mystic divine and kabbalistic significance. A contemporary of his, the Comte de Mellet, added to Court de Gébelin's claims by suggesting (attacked as being erroneous) that the tarot was associated with Romani people and was in fact the imprinted book of Hermes Trismegistus. These claims were continued by Etteilla. Etteilla is primarily recognized as the founder and propagator of the divinatory tarot, but he also participated in the propagation of the occult tarot by claiming the tarot had an ancient Egyptian origin and was an account of the creation of the world and a book of eternal medicine. Éliphas Lévi revitalized the occult tarot by associating it with the mystical Kabbalah and making it a "prime ingredient in magical lore". As Decker, Depaulis, and Dummett note, "it is to him (Lévi) that we owe its (the Tarot's) widespread acceptance as a means of discovering hidden truths and as a document of the occult... Lévi's writings formed the channel through which the Western tradition of magic flowed down to modern times."


title: Major Arcana

text: As the following quote by P. D. Ouspensky shows, the association of the tarot with Hermetic, kabbalastic, magical mysteries continued at least to the early 20th century.


title: Major Arcana

text: Claims such as those initiated by early freemasons today find their way into academic discourse. Semetsky, for example, explains that tarot makes it possible to mediate between humanity and the godhead, or between god/spirit/consciousness and profane human existence. Nicholson uses the tarot to illustrate the deep wisdom of feminist theology. Santarcangeli informs us of the wisdom of the fool and Nichols speaks about the archetypal power of individuation boiling beneath the powerful surface of the tarot archetypes.


title: Major Arcana

text: Now popularly associated with divination, fortune telling, or cartomancy, Tarot was not invented as a mystical or magical tool of divination. The people who published esoteric commentary of the magical, mystery tarot (e.g. Antoine Court de Gébelin and the Comte de Mellet) also published commentary on divinatory tarot. There is a line of development of the cartomantic tarot that occurs in parallel with the imposition of hermetic mysteries on the formerly mundane pack of cards, but that can usefully be distinguished. It was the Comte de Mellet who initiated this development by suggesting that ancient Egyptians had used the tarot for fortune telling and provides a method purportedly used in ancient Egypt. Following MCM, Etteilla brought the cartomantic tarot dramatically forward by inventing a method of cartomancy, assigning a divinatory meaning to each of the cards (both upright and reversed), publishing "La Cartonomancie française" (a book detailing the method), and creating the first tarot decks exclusively intended for cartomantic practice. Etteilla's original method was designed to work with a common pack of cards known as the piquet pack. It was not until 1783, two years after Antoine Court de Gébelin published "Le Monde Primitif" that he turned his cartomantic expertise to the development of a cartomantic method using the standard (i.e. Marseilles) tarot deck. His expertise was formalized with the publication of the book "Manière de se récréer avec le jeu de cartes nommées tarots" and the creation of a society for tarot cartomancy, the Société littéraire des associés libres des interprètes du livre de Thot. The society subsequently went on to publish "Dictionnaire synonimique du livre de Thot", a book that "systematically tabulated all the possible meanings which each card could bear, when upright and reversed."


title: Major Arcana

text: Following Ettielle, tarot cartomancy was moved forward by Marie-Anne Adelaid Lenormand (1768–1830) and others. Lenormand was the first and most famous cartomancer to the stars, claiming to be the confidante of Empress Josephine and other local luminaries. She was so popular, and cartomancy with tarot became so well established in France following her work, that a special deck entitled the "Grand Jeu de Mlle Lenormand" was released in her name two years after her death. This was followed by many other specially designed cartomantic tarot decks, mostly based on Ettielle's Egyptian symbolism, but some providing other (for example biblical or medieval) flavors as well. Tarot as a cartomantic and divinatory tool is well established and new books expounding the mystical utility of the cartomantic tarot are published all the time.


title: Major Arcana

text: By the early 18th century Masonic writers and Protestant clerics had established the tarot trumps as authoritative sources of ancient hermetic wisdom and Christian gnosis, and as revelatory tools of divine cartomantic inspiration, but they did not stop there. In 1870 Jean-Baptiste Pitois (better known as Paul Christian) wrote a book entitled "Histoire de la magie, du monde surnaturel et de la fatalité à travers les temps et les peuples". In that book, Christian identifies the tarot trumps as representing the "principle scenes" of ancient Egyptian initiatory "tests". Christian provides an extended analysis of ancient Egyptian initiation rites that involves Pyramids, 78 steps, and the initiatory revelation of secrets. Decker, Depaulis, and Dummett write:


title: Major Arcana

text: Christian's attempts to give authority to his analysis by falsely attributing an account of ancient Egyptian initiation rites to Iamblichus, but it is clear that if there is any initiatory relevance to the tarot trumps it is Christian who is the source of that information. Nevertheless, Christian's fabricated history of tarot initiation are quickly reinforced with the formation of an occult journal in 1889 entitled "L'Initiation", the publication of an essay by Oswald Wirth in Papus's book "Le Tarot des Bohémiens" that states that the tarot is nothing less than the sacred book of occult initiation, the publication of book by François-Charles Barlet entitled, not surprisingly, "L'Initiation", and the publication of "Le Tarot des Bohémians" by Dr. Papus (a.k.a. Dr. Gérard Encausse). Subsequent to this activity the initiatory relevance of the tarot was firmly established in the minds of occult practitioners.


title: Major Arcana

text: The emergence of the tarot as an initiatory masterpiece was coincident with, and fit perfectly into, the flowering of initiatory esoteric orders and secret brotherhoods during the middle of the 19th century. For example, Marquis Stanislas de Guaita (1861–1897) founded the Cabalistic Order of the Rosy Cross in 1888 along with several key commentators on the initiatory tarot (e.g. Dr Papus, François-Charles Barlet, and Joséphin Péladin). These orders placed great emphasis on secrets, advancing through the grades, and initiatory tests and so it is not surprising that, already having the tarot to hand, they read into the tarot initiatory significance. Doing so not only lent an air of divine, mystical, and ancient authority to their practices but allowed them to continue to expound on the magical, mystical, significance of the presumably ancient and hermetic tarot. Be that as it may the activity established the tarot's significance as a device and book of initiation not only in the minds of occult practitioners, but also (as we will see below) in the minds of new age practitioners, Jungian psychologists, and general academics.


title: Noah Centineo

text: Noah Gregory Centineo ( ; born May 9, 1996) is an American actor. He began his career performing on television and had a main role in the television series "The Fosters" from 2015 to 2018. He achieved wider recognition by starring in the Netflix romantic comedy films "To All the Boys I've Loved Before" (2018) and its sequels, "Sierra Burgess Is a Loser" (2018), and "The Perfect Date" (2019).


title: Noah Centineo

text: In 2022, Centineo played Atom Smasher in the superhero film "Black Adam" and starred in the Netflix spy-adventure series "The Recruit".


title: Noah Centineo

text: Noah Gregory Centineo was born and raised in Boca Raton, Florida. He is of half Italian and half German descent. He has an older sister, Taylor. He attended BAK Middle School of the Arts and then Boca Raton Community High School for ninth and tenth grade; he played soccer there. In 2012, he moved to Los Angeles and attended Agoura High School.


title: Noah Centineo

text: In 2009, Centineo starred as the lead in the family film "The Gold Retrievers". He had small roles in the Disney Channel sitcoms "Austin & Ally" and "Shake It Up". He co-starred as Jaden Stark in the Disney Channel Original Movie "How to Build a Better Boy" (2014). In the same year, he was cast as Ben Eastman in the Disney Channel comedy pilot "Growing Up and Down", which was not picked up to series.


title: Noah Centineo

text: In 2015, Centineo was cast in the main role of Jesus Adams Foster in Freeform's drama series "The Fosters". He made his first appearance in season three's episode "Lucky", which aired on August 17, 2015. In 2017, he was nominated for the for his performance. In 2017, Centineo starred as Hawk Carter in go90's teen drama-thriller series "Tagged" which ended in 2018. He portrayed surfer/artist Johnny Sanders Jr. in the coming-of-age romantic comedy "SPF-18". Also that year he appeared as Camila Cabello's love interest in the music video for her single "Havana."


title: Noah Centineo

text: Centineo starred in the teen comedy Netflix original "To All the Boys" film series. In the first film he was Peter Kavinsky in the adaptation of Jenny Han's romance novel "To All the Boys I've Loved Before". He received positive reviews and became a teen idol. He also starred as Jamey in "Sierra Burgess Is a Loser" and as Lance in "Swiped". In 2019, he played the lead role of Brooks Rattigan in another Netflix romantic comedy film, "The Perfect Date", which was released in April. He had a supporting part in the reboot of "Charlie's Angels", which was released in November 2019.


title: Noah Centineo

text: He also returned as Peter Kavinsky in "" on Netflix on February 12, 2021. He was set to play He-Man in "Masters of the Universe", a film based on the franchise of the same name to be released by Sony Pictures, but in April 2021 he dropped out of the film. Centineo appeared in the DCEU movie "Black Adam" playing Albert Rothstein / Atom Smasher. It was announced that he is negotiating for a role in a GameStop short squeeze movie.


title: Noah Centineo

text: Centineo co-founded Favored Nations with his friend Josh Heller, a Los-Angeles-based actor and lifestyle photographer. Centineo serves as CEO and Heller is the chief marketing officer. The 501(c)(3) nonprofit produces and sells a variety of merchandise in collaboration with celebrities and influencers. They are an intermediary between donors and charities; each donor is able to contribute to a charity from a list of nonprofit organizations which includes Black Lives Matter, Policing Equity, Know Your Rights Camp, Color of Change, The Bail Project, and the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition. In recent years the organization has gained media attention attracting many celebrities and influencers to participate in philanthropic activity. In 2020, Centineo also got Favored Nations involved in a campaign to get out the vote for the 2020 US presidential election. He and Heller opened a voting-themed art house and virtual tour to increase voter participation.


title: Noah Centineo

text: In February 2020, Centineo revealed in an interview with "Harper's Bazaar" that he had been sober for a few years. He experienced a turbulent period of time beginning when he was seventeen and ending the day before his 21st birthday; he says it was "a really dark time in my life." Also in February 2020 he launched Favored Nations, a nonprofit initiative to utilize his social media popularity and influence raising money for charity. He got the idea after teaming with Omaze for a contest which raised $280,000 for charity; the prize was a chance to go on a hike and have dinner with him. Centineo was in a relationship with model Alexis Ren from March 2019 to January 2020.


Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith is a 2005 American epic space opera film written and directed by George Lucas. It stars Ewan McGregor, Natalie Portman, Hayden Christensen, Ian McDiarmid, Samuel L. Jackson, Christopher Lee, Anthony Daniels, Kenny Baker and Frank Oz. The sequel to "" (1999) and "" (2002), it is the sixth film in the "Star Wars" film series, the final installment in the "Star Wars" prequel trilogy, and third chronological chapter of the "Skywalker Saga".


title: Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith

text: "Revenge of the Sith" is set three years after the onset of the Clone Wars as established in "Attack of the Clones". The Jedi are spread across the galaxy in a full-scale war against the Separatists. The Jedi Council dispatches Obi-Wan Kenobi on a mission to defeat General Grievous, the head of the Separatist army, to put an end to the war. Meanwhile, after having visions of his wife Padmé Amidala dying in childbirth, Anakin Skywalker is tasked by the Council to spy on Palpatine, the Supreme Chancellor of the Galactic Republic and, secretly, a Sith Lord. Palpatine manipulates Anakin into turning to the dark side of the Force and becoming his apprentice, Darth Vader, with wide-ranging consequences for the galaxy.


text: Lucas began writing the script before production of "Attack of the Clones" ended, citing that he wanted the end of the trilogy to have similar aspects to a romantic tragedy, thus building into Darth Vader's state at the beginning of the next film. Production of "Revenge of the Sith" started in June 2003, and filming took place in Australia with additional locations in Thailand, Switzerland, China, Italy and the United Kingdom.


text: "Revenge of the Sith" premiered on May 15, 2005, at the Cannes Film Festival, then released worldwide on May 19, 2005. The film received positive reviews and is widely considered to be the best installment of the prequel trilogy, with praise for its mature tone, story, emotional weight, action sequences, score, visual effects, and the performances of McGregor, McDiarmid, Oz, and Jimmy Smits; criticism largely focused on the film's dialogue and Christensen's performance. It broke several box office records during its opening week and went on to earn over $868 million worldwide, making it the second-highest-grossing film in the "Star Wars" franchise at the time. It was the highest-grossing film in the U.S. and the second-highest-grossing film worldwide in 2005. It also holds the record for the highest opening-day gross on a Thursday, making $50 million.


text: Above Coruscant, Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker lead a mission to rescue the kidnapped Supreme Chancellor Palpatine from the cyborg Separatist commander General Grievous. After infiltrating Grievous' flagship, Obi-Wan and Anakin battle the Sith Lord Count Dooku, whom Anakin overpowers and decapitates at Palpatine's urging. Grievous escapes the battle-torn ship, which the Jedi crash-land on Coruscant. There, Anakin reunites with his secret wife, Padmé Amidala, who reveals that she is pregnant. While initially excited, Anakin soon begins to have visions of Padmé dying in childbirth.


text: Palpatine appoints Anakin to the Jedi Council as his personal representative. The Council, suspicious of Palpatine, approves the appointment but declines to grant Anakin the rank of Master and instead instructs him to spy on Palpatine, diminishing Anakin's faith in the Jedi. Meanwhile, on Utapau, Grievous relocates the Separatist leaders to the volcanic planet Mustafar. Obi-Wan travels to Utapau to confront Grievous and kills him, while Yoda travels to the Wookiee planet of Kashyyyk to defend it from a Separatist invasion.


text: Palpatine tempts Anakin with his knowledge of the dark side of the Force, and offers to teach him the power to prevent Padmé's death. Anakin deduces that Palpatine is the Sith Lord behind the war and reports his treachery to Mace Windu, who confronts and subdues him. Desperate to save Padmé's life, Anakin severs Windu's hand before he can kill Palpatine, who sends Windu falling to his death with a blast of Force lightning. Anakin pledges himself to the Sith, and Palpatine knights him Darth Vader. Palpatine issues Order 66, which commands the clone troopers to kill their commanding Jedi generals across the galaxy, while Vader and a battalion of clone troopers kill the remaining Jedi in the Jedi Temple. Vader then travels to Mustafar to assassinate the Separatist leaders, while Palpatine declares himself Emperor before the Galactic Senate, transforming the Republic into the Galactic Empire, and denounces the Jedi as traitors.


text: Having survived the chaos, Obi-Wan and Yoda return to Coruscant, where Obi-Wan learns of Anakin's turn to the dark side. Yoda instructs Obi-Wan to confront Vader while he faces Palpatine. Obi-Wan seeks out Padmé to find out Vader's whereabouts and reveals his treachery. Padmé then travels to Mustafar – with Obi-Wan stowing away on her ship – and pleads with Vader to abandon the dark side and leave with her, but he refuses. Seeing Obi-Wan aboard the ship, and thinking that they are conspiring to kill him, Vader uses the Force to strangle Padmé to unconsciousness in a blind rage. Obi-Wan then engages Vader in a lightsaber duel that ends with Obi-Wan severing Vader's legs and left arm, leaving him at the bank of a lava flow where Vader is horribly burned. Obi-Wan retrieves Vader's lightsaber and leaves him for dead.


text: On Coruscant, Yoda battles Palpatine until their duel reaches a stalemate. Realizing he cannot defeat Palpatine, Yoda flees with Senator Bail Organa and regroups with Obi-Wan and Padmé on the planetoid Polis Massa. There, Padmé gives birth to twins, whom she names Luke and Leia, and dies soon after, having lost her will to live but still believing there is good in Vader. Palpatine retrieves a barely-alive Vader and takes him to Coruscant, where his mutilated body is treated and covered in a black armored suit. When Vader asks if Padmé is safe, Palpatine says that he killed her out of anger, and Vader screams in agony.


text: Obi-Wan and Yoda plan to conceal the twins from the Sith and go into exile until the time is right to challenge the Empire. As Padmé's funeral takes place on her home world of Naboo, Palpatine and Vader supervise the construction of the Death Star. Bail takes Leia to Alderaan, where he and his wife adopt her, while Obi-Wan delivers Luke to his step-uncle and -aunt, Owen and Beru Lars, on Tatooine before going into exile to watch over the boy.


text: Peter Mayhew, Oliver Ford Davies, Ahmed Best, and Silas Carson reprise their roles as Chewbacca, Sio Bibble, Jar Jar Binks, and Nute Gunray and Ki-Adi-Mundi, respectively, from the previous films. Joel Edgerton and Bonnie Piesse also make cameo appearances, reprising their roles as Owen and Beru Lars respectively from "Attack of the Clones". Sound engineer Matthew Wood provides the voice of General Grievous, the fearsome cyborg commander of the Separatists' droid army, who had been trained in wielding a lightsaber by Count Dooku. Wood took over the role, after Gary Oldman was originally cast in the role, but had to drop out of the production due to scheduling conflicts; Oldman had completed some voice-over work. Temuera Morrison portrays Commander Cody and the rest of the clone troopers. Bruce Spence portrays Tion Medon, local administrator of Utapau. Jeremy Bulloch (who played Boba Fett in "The Empire Strikes Back" and "Return of the Jedi") appears as Captain Colton, the pilot of the Rebel Blockade Runner "Tantive IV". Genevieve O'Reilly portrays senator Mon Mothma, though her speaking scene was ultimately cut. Rohan Nichol portrays Captain Raymus Antilles.


text: Wayne Pygram appears as a young Wilhuff Tarkin, and stunt coordinator Nick Gillard appears as a Jedi named Cin Drallig (his name spelled backward, without the 'k'). Editor Roger Barton's son Aidan Barton portrays Luke Skywalker and Leia Organa as infants.


text: Director and "Star Wars" creator George Lucas has a cameo as Baron Papanoida, a blue-faced alien in attendance at the Coruscant opera house. Lucas' son Jett portrays Zett Jukassa, a young Jedi-in-training. One of Lucas' daughters, Amanda, appears as Terr Taneel, seen in a security hologram, while his other daughter Katie plays a blue-skinned Pantoran named Chi Eekway, visible when Palpatine arrives at the Senate after being saved by the Jedi and talking to Baron Papanoida at the opera house. Christian Simpson appeared as a stunt double for Hayden Christensen.


text: Lucas said he conceived the "Star Wars" saga's story in the form of a plot outline in 1973. However, he later clarified that, at the time of the saga's conception, he had not fully realized the details—only major plot points. The film's climactic duel has its basis in the "Return of the Jedi" novelization, in which Obi-Wan recounts his battle with Anakin that ended with the latter falling "into a molten pit". Lucas began working on the screenplay for "Episode III" before the previous film, "Attack of the Clones", was released, proposing to concept artists that the film would open with a montage of seven battles on seven planets. In "The Secret History of Star Wars", Michael Kaminski surmises that Lucas found flaws with Anakin's fall to the dark side and radically reorganized the plot. For example, instead of opening the film with a montage of Clone War battles, Lucas decided to focus on Anakin, ending the first act with him killing Count Dooku, an action that signals his turn to the dark side.


text: A significant number of fans speculated online about the episode title for the film with rumored titles including "Rise of the Empire", "The Creeping Fear" (which was also named as the film's title on the official website on April Fool's 2004), and "Birth of the Empire". Eventually, "Revenge of the Sith" also became a title guessed by fans that George Lucas would indirectly confirm. The title is a reference to "Revenge of the Jedi", the original title of "Return of the Jedi"; Lucas changed the title scant weeks before the premiere of "Return of the Jedi", declaring that Jedi do not seek revenge.


text: Lucas had originally planned to include even more ties to the original trilogy, and wrote early drafts of the script in which a 10-year-old Han Solo appeared on Kashyyyk, but the role was not cast or shot. He also wrote a scene in which Palpatine reveals to Anakin that he created him from midichlorians, and is thus his "father", a clear parallel to Vader's revelation to Luke in "The Empire Strikes Back", but Lucas ejected this scene as well. Another planned scene by Lucas that was written during the early development of the film was a conversation between Master Yoda and the ghostly Qui-Gon Jinn, with Liam Neeson reprising his role as Jinn (he also hinted his possible appearance in the film). However, the scene was never filmed and Neeson was never recorded, although the scene was present in the film's novelization.


text: After principal photography was complete in 2003, Lucas made even more changes in Anakin's character, rewriting his turn to the dark side. Lucas accomplished this through editing the principal footage and filming new scenes during pickups in London in 2004. In the previous versions, Anakin had several reasons for turning to the dark side, one of which was his sincere belief that the Jedi were plotting to take over the Republic. Although this is still intact in the finished film, by revising and refilming many scenes, Lucas emphasized Anakin's desire to save Padmé from death. Thus, in the version that made it to theaters, Anakin falls to the dark side primarily to save Padmé.


text: For the Kashyyyk environment, the art department turned to the "Star Wars Holiday Special" for inspiration. Over a period of months, Lucas would approve hundreds of designs that would eventually appear in the film. He would later rewrite entire scenes and action sequences to correspond to certain designs he had chosen. The designs were then shipped to the pre-visualization department to create moving CGI versions known as animatics. Ben Burtt would edit these scenes with Lucas in order to pre-visualize what the film would look like before the scenes were filmed. The pre-visualization footage featured a basic raw CGI environment with equally unprocessed character models performing a scene, typically for action sequences. Steven Spielberg was brought in as a "guest director" to make suggestions to the art designers for the Mustafar duel, and oversee the pre-visualization of an unused version of the Utapau chase scene. Later, the pre-visualization and art department designs were sent to the production department to begin "bringing the film out of the concept phase" by building sets, props and costumes.


text: Although the first scene filmed was the final scene to appear in the film (shot during the filming of "Attack of the Clones" in 2000), the first bulk of principal photography on the film occurred from June 30, 2003 to September 17, 2003, with additional photography at Shepperton Studios in Surrey and Elstree Studios in Hertfordshire from August 2004 to January 31, 2005. The initial filming took place on sound stages at Fox Studios Australia in Sydney, although practical environments were shot as background footage later to be composited into the film. These included the limestone mountains depicting Kashyyyk, which were filmed in Phuket, Thailand. The production company was also fortunate enough to be shooting at the same time that Mount Etna erupted in Italy. Camera crews were sent to the location to shoot several angles of the volcano that were later spliced into the background of the animatics and the final film version of the planet Mustafar.


text: While shooting key dramatic scenes, Lucas would often use an "A camera" and "B camera", or the "V technique", a process that involves shooting with two or more cameras at the same time in order to gain several angles of the same performance. Using the HD technology developed for the film, the filmmakers were able to send footage to the editors the same day it was shot, a process that would require a full 24 hours had it been shot on film. Footage featuring the planet Mustafar was given to editor Roger Barton, who was on location in Sydney cutting the climactic duel.


text: Hayden Christensen says Lucas asked him "to bulk up and physically show the maturity that had taken place between the two films." The actor says he worked out with a trainer in Sydney for three months and ate "six meals a day and on every protein, weight gain supplement that man has created" to go from 160 lbs to 185 lbs.


text: Christensen and Ewan McGregor began rehearsing their climactic lightsaber duel long before Lucas would shoot it. They trained extensively with stunt coordinator Nick Gillard to memorize and perform their duel together. As in the previous prequel film, McGregor and Christensen performed their own lightsaber fighting scenes without the use of stunt doubles. The speed at which Vader and Obi-Wan engage in their duel is mostly the speed at which it was filmed, although there are instances where single frames were removed to increase the velocity of particular strikes. An example of this occurs as Obi-Wan strikes down on Vader after applying an armlock in the duel's first half.


text: "Revenge of the Sith" eventually became the first "Star Wars" film in which Anakin Skywalker and the suited Darth Vader were played by the same actor in the same film. As Christensen recounted, it was originally intended to simply have a "tall guy" in the Darth Vader costume, but, after "begging and pleading", Christensen persuaded Lucas to have the Vader costume used in the film created specifically to fit him. The new costume featured shoe lifts and a muscle suit. It also required Christensen (who is tall) to look through the helmet's mouthpiece.


text: In 2004, Gary Oldman was originally approached to provide the voice of General Grievous; however, complications arose during contract negotiations after Oldman learned the film was to be made outside of the Screen Actors Guild, of which he is a member. He backed out of the role rather than violate the union's rules. Matthew Wood, who voiced Grievous, disputed this story at Celebration III, held in Indianapolis. According to him, Oldman is a friend of producer Rick McCallum, and thus recorded an audition as a favor to him, but was not chosen. Wood, who was also the supervising sound editor, was in charge of the auditions and submitted his audition anonymously in the midst of 30 others, under the initials "A.S." for Alan Smithee. Days later, he received a phone call asking for the full name to the initials "A.S."


text: The post-production department (handled by Industrial Light & Magic) began work during filming and continued until weeks before the film was released in 2005. Special effects were created using almost all formats, including model work, CGI and practical effects. The same department later composited all such work into the filmed scenes—both processes taking nearly two years to complete. "Revenge of the Sith" has 2,151 shots that use special effects, a world record.


text: The DVD featurette "Within a Minute" illustrated the film required 910 artists and 70,441 man-hours to create 49 seconds of footage for the Mustafar duel alone. Members of Hyperspace, the Official Star Wars Fan Club, received a special look into the production. Benefits included not only special articles, but they also received access to a webcam that transmitted a new image every 20 seconds during the time it was operating in Fox Studios Australia. Many times the stars, and Lucas himself, were spotted on the webcam.


text: Lucas excised all scenes of a group of Senators, including Padmé, Bail Organa, and Mon Mothma (Genevieve O'Reilly), organizing an alliance to prevent Palpatine from usurping any more emergency powers. Though this is essentially the birth of the Rebel Alliance, the scenes were discarded to achieve more focus on Anakin's story. The scene where Yoda arrives on Dagobah to begin his self-imposed exile was also removed, but is featured as an extended scene in the DVD release, although McCallum stated he hoped Lucas would have added it to the new cut as part of a six-episode DVD box set.


text: Bai Ling filmed minor scenes for the film playing a senator, but her role was cut during editing. She claimed this was because she appeared in a nude pictorial for the June 2005 issue of "Playboy", whose appearance on newsstands coincided with the film's May release. Lucas denied this, stating that the cut had been made more than a year earlier, and that he had cut his own daughter's scenes as well. The bonus features show an additional removed scene in which Jedi Master Shaak Ti is killed by General Grievous in front of Obi-Wan and Anakin. The bonus features also show Obi-Wan and Anakin running through Grievous' ship, escaping droids through a fuel tunnel, and arguing over what R2-D2 is saying.


text: The music was composed and conducted by John Williams (who has composed and conducted the score for every episode in the "Star Wars" saga), and performed by the London Symphony Orchestra and London Voices. The film's soundtrack was released by Sony Pictures Classical Records on May 3, 2005, more than two weeks before the film's release. A music video titled "A Hero Falls" was created for the film's theme, "Battle of the Heroes", featuring footage from the film and was also available on the DVD.


text: The soundtrack also came with a collectors' DVD, "", at no additional cost. The DVD, hosted by McDiarmid, features 16 music videos set to remastered selections of music from all six film scores, set chronologically through the saga.


text: The first trailer for "Revenge of the Sith" premiered in theaters on November 5, 2004 with the release of "The Incredibles". It was also attached to the screenings of "The Polar Express", "National Treasure", "Alexander" and "Flight of the Phoenix". At the same time, the trailer became available on the Internet. Just four months later, another trailer was unveiled on March 10, 2005, debuting with "The O.C."s "The Mallpisode" during the second season (Lucas himself would appear in a later episode) and in theaters with the release of "Robots" the next day on March 11. On March 14, it would then premiere on the official "Star Wars" website. On March 17, 2005, George Lucas revealed a preview of the film at the ShoWest Convention in Las Vegas, saying "It's not like the old "Star Wars". This ones a little bit emotional. We like to describe it as "Titanic" in space. It's a tearjerker."


text: "Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith" charity premieres took place in Seattle, Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington D.C., Boston, Denver, Atlanta, San Francisco, and Miami on Thursday, May 12, 2005; and on May 13, 2005, there were two additional charity premiere screenings in George Lucas's hometown of Modesto, California. The official premiere was at the 2005 Cannes Film Festival (out of competition) on May 16. Its theatrical release in most other countries took place on May 19 to coincide with the 1999 release of "The Phantom Menace" (the 1977 release of "A New Hope" and the 1983 release of "Return of the Jedi" were also released on the same day and month, six years apart). The global outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas claimed one week before the premiere that it may have cost the U.S. economy approximately US$627 million in lost productivity because of employees who took a day off or reported in sick. Grauman's Chinese Theatre, a traditional venue for the "Star Wars" films, did not show it. However, a line of people stood there for more than a month hoping to convince someone to change this. Most of them took advantage of an offer to see the film at a nearby cinema, ArcLight Cinemas (formerly the "Cinerama Dome"). On May 16, the Empire Cinema in London's Leicester Square hosted a day-long Star Wars marathon showing of all six films; an army of Imperial stormtroopers "guarded" the area, and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra gave a free concert of "Star Wars" music.


text: A copy of the film leaked onto peer-to-peer file sharing networks just hours after opening in theaters. The film was a time-stamped workprint, suggesting it may have come from within the industry rather than from someone who videotaped an advance screening. Eight people were later charged with copyright infringement and distributing material illegally. Documents filed by the Los Angeles District Attorney allege that a copy of the film was taken from an unnamed Californian post-production office by an employee, who later pleaded guilty to his charges. The illegal copy was passed among seven people until reaching an eighth party, who also pleaded guilty to uploading to an unnamed P2P network.


text: "Revenge of the Sith" is the first "Star Wars" film to receive a PG-13 rating from the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), officially for "sci-fi violence and some intense images", namely for the scene in which Darth Vader is set aflame by lava. Lucas had stated months before the MPAA's decision that he felt the film should receive a PG-13 rating, because of Anakin's final moments and the film's content being the darkest and most intense of all six films. Roger Ebert and Richard Roeper later opined that children would be able to handle the film as long as they had parental guidance. All previously released films in the series were rated PG.


text: The film was released on DVD and VHS on October 31, 2005, in the UK and Ireland; on November 1, 2005, it was released in the United States and Canada on DVD; and on November 3, 2005, it was released in Australia. It was also released in most major territories on or near the same day. The DVD release consists of widescreen and pan and scan fullscreen versions and is THX certified. This two-disc set contains one disc with the film and the other one with bonus features. The first disc features three randomized selected menus, which are Coruscant, Utapau and Mustafar. There is an Easter egg in the options menu. When the THX Optimizer is highlighted, the viewer can press 1-1-3-8. By doing this, a hip hop music video with Yoda and some clone troopers will play.


text: The DVD includes a number of documentaries including a new full-length documentary as well as two featurettes, one which explores the prophecy of Anakin Skywalker as the Chosen One, the other looking at the film's stunts and a of web-documentaries from the official web site. Like the other DVD releases, included is an audio commentary track featuring Lucas, producer Rick McCallum, animation director Rob Coleman, and ILM visual effects supervisors John Knoll and Roger Guyett. were included with introductions from Lucas and McCallum.


text: This release is notable because, due to marketing issues, it was the first "Star Wars" film never to be released on VHS in the United States. However, the film was released on VHS in Australia, the U.K. and other countries.


text: The six "Star Wars" films were released by 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment on Blu-ray on September 16, 2011, in three different editions.


text: On April 7, 2015, Walt Disney Studios, 20th Century Fox, and Lucasfilm jointly announced the digital releases of the six released "Star Wars" films. "Revenge of the Sith" was released through the iTunes Store, Amazon Video, Vudu, Google Play, and Disney Movies Anywhere on April 10, 2015.


text: Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment reissued "Revenge of the Sith" on Blu-ray, DVD, and digital download on September 22, 2019. Additionally, all six films were available for 4K HDR and Dolby Atmos streaming on Disney+ upon the service's launch on November 12, 2019. This version of the film was released by Disney on 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray on March 31, 2020 whilst being re-released on Blu-ray and DVD.


text: On September 28, 2010, it was announced that all six films in the series were to be stereo-converted to 3D. The films would be re-released in chronological order beginning with "The Phantom Menace" on February 10, 2012. "Revenge of the Sith" was originally scheduled to be re-released in 3D on October 11, 2013. However, on January 28, 2013, Lucasfilm announced that it was postponing the 3D release of episodes "II" and "III" in order to "focus 100 percent of our efforts on """ and that further information about 3D release plans would be issued at a later date. The premiere of the 3D version was shown on April 17, 2015, at Star Wars Celebration Anaheim.


text: On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 79% based on reviews, with an average rating of . The site's critical consensus reads, "With "Episode III: Revenge of the Sith", George Lucas brings his second "Star Wars" trilogy to a suitably thrilling and often poignant – if still a bit uneven – conclusion." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 68 out of 100, based on 40 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A−" on an A+ to F scale, the same score as the previous two films.


text: Most critics have considered the film to be the best of the prequel trilogy. A. O. Scott of "The New York Times" concluded that it was "the best of the four episodes Mr. Lucas has directed", and equal to "The Empire Strikes Back" as "the richest and most challenging movie in the cycle". J.R. Jones, a "Chicago Reader" critic who disliked "The Phantom Menace" and "Attack of the Clones", gave the film a positive review, saying that it had a "relatively thoughtful story". Roger Ebert of the "Chicago Sun-Times" gave the film three-and-a-half out of four stars, writing "If [Lucas] got bogged down in solemnity and theory in "Episode II: Attack of the Clones", the Force is in a jollier mood this time, and "Revenge of the Sith" is a great entertainment", but he noted that "the dialogue throughout the movie is once again its weakest point".


text: Though many critics and fans viewed "Revenge of the Sith" as the strongest of the three prequels, some viewers thought it was more or less on par with the previous two episodes. Much of the criticism was directed towards the dialogue, particularly the film's romantic scenes; critics claimed this demonstrated Lucas's weakness as a writer of dialogue, a subject with which Lucas openly agreed when receiving the Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Film Institute. Some film critics and fans criticized Hayden Christensen's acting, calling it "wooden". A retrospective review by "Time" felt that Christensen's maligned performance was in part affected by the screenwriting.


text: Art critic Camille Paglia praised the film as an essential example of the modern digital art movement due to its "overwhelming operatic power and yes, seriousness", and arguing that its finale has "more inherent artistic value, emotional power, and global impact" than the work of some contemporary artists.


text: During the late 2010s, the film amassed a cult following on social media among young fans who were children when the film was released, using the film's dialogue to create Internet memes out of nostalgia.


text: Some American conservatives criticized the film, claiming it had a liberal bias and was a commentary on the George W. Bush administration and Iraq War. Some websites went so far as to propose a boycott of the film. Lucas defended the film, stating that the film's storyline was written during the Vietnam War and was influenced by that conflict rather than the war in Iraq. Lucas also said "The parallels between Vietnam and what we're doing in Iraq now are unbelievable".


text: The film was released in 115 countries. Its worldwide gross eventually reached $849 million—making it the second most financially successful film of 2005, behind "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire". The film earned an estimated $16.91 million from 2,900 midnight screenings in North America upon its release. In total, it earned a record $50 million on its opening day, marking the record for the highest opening-day gross on a Thursday. It was surpassed the following year by "", which earned $55.5 million on its opening day.


text: With only the May 19 earnings, the film broke four box office records: midnight screenings gross (previously held by "", $8 million), opening day gross ("Spider-Man 2", with $40.4 million), single day gross ("Shrek 2" with $44.8 million) and Thursday gross ("The Matrix Reloaded" with $37.5 million). Its single day and opening day gross records were later surpassed by "" on July 7, 2006, when that movie grossed $55.5 million on its opening day, and its midnight screening gross was broken by "The Dark Knight" on July 18, 2008 with $18.5 million. With a total gross of $108.4 million, "Revenge of the Sith" would go on to hold the record for having the biggest opening weekend for any 20th Century Fox film for a decade until it was taken by "Deadpool" in 2016. The year prior, "Minions" had already surpassed "Revenge of the Sith" for having the largest opening weekend for a prequel.


text: According to box office analysis sites, the film set American records for highest gross in a given number of days for each of its first 12 days of release except for the seventh and eighth, where the record is narrowly held by "Spider-Man 2". Within three days, "Revenge of the Sith" surpassed "Spider-Man" for having the highest three-day gross of any film, scoring a total of $124.7 million. On its fifth day, it became the highest-grossing film of 2005, surpassing "Hitch" ($177.6 million). The film earned $158.5 million in its first four-day period, surpassing the previous four-day record held by "The Matrix Reloaded" ($134.3 million), and joining the latter film, "Spider-Man", and "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" as one of the only four films to make $100 million in their first three days. In eight days, it reached the $200 million mark (a record tied with "Spider-Man 2") and by its 17th day, the film had passed $300 million (surpassing the record of 18 days of "Shrek 2"). It was eventually the third-fastest film (after "Shrek 2" and "Spider-Man") to reach $350 million. "Revenge of the Sith" earned a total of $55.2 million during its second weekend, making it the fourth-highest-grossing second weekend of all time, behind "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone", "Spider-Man" and "Shrek 2". The film then earned $70 million in just four days, becoming the seventh-highest Memorial Day weekend gross of any film, trailing only behind "Shrek 2", "", "The Day After Tomorrow", "Bruce Almighty", "Pearl Harbor" and "".


text: The film ended its run in American theaters on October 20, 2005, finishing with a total gross of $380,270,577. It ranks 29th in all-time domestic grosses and is the highest-grossing U.S. of 2005, out-grossing second-place "" by nearly $90 million. The film sold an estimated 59,324,600 tickets in the US. It topped the domestic box office for two consecutive weekends before being overtaken by "Madagascar" and "The Longest Yard" (which were in their second weekend).


text: International grosses that exceeded $460 million include those Australia ($27.2 million), France and Algeria ($56.9 million), Germany ($47.3 million), Italy ($11.3 million), Japan ($82.7 million), Mexico ($15.3 million), South Korea ($10.3 million), Spain ($23.8 million), and the United Kingdom and Ireland ($72.8 million). The total worldwide opening of "Revenge of the Sith" for each country was $254 million, combined with $304 million from its four-day weekend. It would go on to hold this record for two years before "Spider-Man 3" took it in 2007.


text: Following the release of "Revenge of the Sith"—the completion of the original and prequel "Star Wars" series—on June 9, 2005, George Lucas was presented with the 33rd American Film Institute Lifetime Achievement Award. The institute honored his "astonishing contributions to the art and technology of filmmaking, as well as the impact of the epic Star Wars series".


text: Despite being the prequel trilogy's best reviewed and received film, it received fewer award nominations than the previous films. It became the only "Star Wars" film not to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Visual Effects; it was nominated for Best Makeup (Dave Elsey and Nikki Gooley), losing to "". It also won "Favorite Motion Picture" and "Favorite Dramatic Motion Picture" awards at the People's Choice Awards, "Hollywood Movie of the Year" award at the Hollywood Film Festival, Empire Awards for Sci-Fi/Fantasy Film and Scene of the Year (The birth of Vader), and the Teen Choice Award for Choice Movie – Action.


text: As did every film of the original trilogy, the film won the Saturn Award for Best Science Fiction Film. Williams also won Best Music. The film was nominated for ten Saturn Awards overall, including Best Director and Best Writing for Lucas, Best Actor for Christensen, Best Actress for Natalie Portman and Best Supporting Actor for Ian McDiarmid.


text: Of the three "Star Wars" prequels, the film received the fewest Golden Raspberry Awards nominations: only one, for Christensen as Worst Supporting Actor, which he won. ("The Phantom Menace" and "Attack of the Clones" received seven nominations each, with one and two wins, respectively.) It is the only "Star Wars" prequel not to receive a Razzie nomination for Worst Picture. Christensen further won the "Best Villain" award at the MTV Movie Awards. The film also received the fewest nominations (and no wins) at the 2005 Stinkers Bad Movie Awards: Worst Screenplay for a Film Grossing More Than $100M and Worst On-Screen Couple (Christensen and Portman).


text: Throughout "Revenge of the Sith", Lucas refers to a wide range of films and other sources, drawing on political, military, and mythological motifs to enhance his story's impact. The most media coverage was likely given to an exchange between Anakin and Obi-Wan, leading to the aforementioned conflict: "If you're not with me, then you're my enemy", Anakin declares. Despite Lucas' insistence to the contrary, "The Seattle Times" concluded, "Without naming Bush or the Patriot Act, it's all unmistakable no matter what your own politics may be."


text: McDiarmid, Lucas, and others have also called Anakin's journey to the dark side Faustian in the sense of making a "pact with the devil" for short-term gain, with the fiery volcano planet Mustafar representing hell. Midway through the film, Lucas intercuts between Anakin and Padmé by themselves, thinking about one another in the Jedi Temple and their apartment, respectively, during sunset. The sequence is without dialogue and complemented by a moody, synthesized soundtrack. Lucas' coverage of the exterior cityscapes, skylines and interior isolation in the so-called "Ruminations" sequence is similar to the cinematography and "mise-en-scène" of "Rosemary's Baby", a film in which a husband makes a literal pact with the devil.


text: The film's novelization was written by Matthew Stover. It has more dialogue than the film, and certain story elements were expanded upon in the novelization including Anakin and Palpatine's relationship and Palpatine's apprenticeship to Darth Plagueis.


text: A video game based on the film was released on May 5, 2005, two weeks before the film. The game generally followed the film's storyline, integrating scenes from the film. However, many sections of the game featured scenes cut from the film, or entirely new scenes for the game. The style of the game was mostly lightsaber combat and fighting as Obi-Wan or Anakin. It also has a form of multiplayer mode, which includes both "VS" and "Cooperative" mode. In the first mode, two players fight with characters of their choice against each other in a lightsaber duel to the death. In the latter mode, two players team up to combat increasingly difficult waves of enemies.


text: The and subsequent fill the three-year gap between the events of "Attack of the Clones" and "Revenge of the Sith". A number of plot threads initially developed for inclusion in "Revenge of the Sith" were instead incorporated into "The Clone Wars". These include Boba Fett's revenge plot against Mace Windu for his father Jango's death, and the solving of the mystery behind deceased Jedi Master Sifo-Dyas which was introduced in "Attack of the Clones". The final four episodes of the series take place concurrently with "Revenge of the Sith". Several scenes from the film were recreated and expanded for these episodes in order to showcase the whereabouts of Anakin Skywalker's former Padawan Ahsoka Tano during the events of the film. While Ahsoka was a major character in "The Clone Wars", she is not referenced in "Revenge of the Sith" as the character had not yet been created at the time.


text: Several scenes from "Revenge of the Sith" were recreated in the first episode "Aftermath". This episode also takes place concurrently with the film and the following episodes deal with the aftermath of Order 66 and the Clone Wars.


text: The 2022 miniseries takes place ten years after "Revenge of the Sith" (and approximately nine years before "A New Hope"), and features flashbacks taking place prior and during the events of the film, with some of the latter via archive footage. McGregor, Christensen, Earl Jones, Edgerton, Piesse, Smits, McDiarmid, and Daniels reprise their roles from the film.


title: Dustin Diamond

text: Dustin Neil Diamond (January 7, 1977 – February 1, 2021) was an American actor and stand-up comedian, best known for his role as Samuel "Screech" Powers throughout the "Saved by the Bell" franchise.


title: Dustin Diamond

text: Diamond was born in San Jose, California, the son of Jaimee and Mark Diamond. His father taught digital electronics for a computer processing firm, and his mother was a computer operator for Pacific Bell. Diamond was Jewish and attended Zion Lutheran School.


title: Dustin Diamond

text: Diamond began acting as a child. He became known for playing Samuel "Screech" Powers on the television show "Saved by the Bell", a role he played for close to thirteen years from its beginning as "Good Morning, Miss Bliss" (1988–89) through its final incarnation, "" (1994–2000). Continuing the series into college, "" shows most of the cast transplanted into not only the same college, but also the same college dormitory, where Screech continued his typical misadventures. "The College Years" was canceled after one season. Diamond returned to Bayside High as Principal Belding's assistant in "The New Class" episodes, remaining with the show until its cancellation.


title: Dustin Diamond

text: Diamond began doing stand-up comedy after the end of "Saved by the Bell" and toured on and off after that. He was also featured on a number of game and reality shows including "The Weakest Link" and "Celebrity Boxing 2". Diamond also made several cameo appearances in films, including appearances in "Made" (2001) and "" (2003).


title: Dustin Diamond

text: In 2007, Diamond was a cast member of the fifth season of "Celebrity Fit Club". During his run on the show, he came into conflict with former "American Idol" finalist Kimberley Locke, country singer Cledus T. Judd, rapper Da Brat, the program's host Ant, and the program's trainer, former USMC sergeant Harvey Walden IV. During one episode, Diamond mentioned what may have happened if he were to challenge Ant to "physical combat" and after Harvey Walden defended Ant, Diamond subsequently said the same to him, causing Walden to lose his temper.


title: Dustin Diamond

text: Following "Celebrity Fit Club", Diamond played roles as "Alumnus Guy #1" in "" (2009), in a supporting role in the sports comedy "Tetherball: The Movie" (2010), and as Bernardo, the castle guard, in the partially-animated science fiction comedy "Hamlet A.D.D." (2014).


title: Dustin Diamond

text: In 2006, Diamond directed and released his own celebrity sex tape, "Screeched – Saved by the Smell". According to Melanie McFarland's retelling of a press release, Diamond said the tape got out because he and a group of friends had a "monthly gathering" wherein they exchanged such tapes. Several years later, Diamond said in a "" interview on the Oprah Winfrey Network that he was not in the sex tape; rather, a stunt double had his likeness superimposed.


title: Dustin Diamond

text: In 2009, Diamond published an inside story of the show's cast and crew, from his point of view, titled "Behind the Bell". The book paints an unflattering portrait of many of Diamond's colleagues and their allegedly sordid backstage behavior. Some of these claims have been repudiated by Diamond's colleagues and questioned by critics. Diamond later commented on the book's content in a December 2013 appearance on an "Oprah: Where Are They Now?" segment on the OWN Network in which he stated that the book was ghost written by an author who simply interviewed him and compiled the book from his answers. He claimed that many parts of the book, such as allegations of teen sex and drug use, were fabricated from very minor statements he made during the interviews.


title: Dustin Diamond

text: Diamond was also a musician and formed an alternative metal band called Salty The Pocketknife. Diamond played bass and wrote much of the music as well. Shortly after recording their first album, the band split up due to internal disagreements. Diamond also appeared on truTV's "" as a commentator.


title: Dustin Diamond

text: In August 2013, Diamond became a housemate on the twelfth series of "Celebrity Big Brother" in the UK. He became the fourth housemate to be evicted on Day 16.


title: Dustin Diamond

text: Diamond was a spokesperson for the Rockford, Illinois-based insurance company Insurance King. In some Insurance King commercials he is featured in, he makes several references to Saved By the Bell (with logos in the commercial saying “Saved By the King”). In other commercials, he is shown to be pulled over, not caring about the already numerous tickets he has because he is “saved by the King!”, being in a Western style standoff, and him being a terrible barber.


title: Dustin Diamond

text: Diamond was a fan of professional wrestling. He appeared at Memphis Championship Wrestling in April 2000. He was a part of a skit with The Kat where was beaten up by Chip Diver, the Fabulous Rocker, and Dannie B.


title: Dustin Diamond

text: On September 18, 2002, he appeared on an NWA-TNA's Asylum weekly pay-per-view. Billed as Screech, he challenged TNA's bellkeeper, Tiny the Bellkeeper, to a boxing match. Screech won by knockout in 42 seconds.


title: Dustin Diamond

text: In 2008, Diamond was a contestant on "Hulk Hogan's Celebrity Championship Wrestling", broadcast on CMT.


title: Dustin Diamond

text: Diamond was a special guest referee for a match at Celebrity Big Bang Wrestling, Mistress Devon James vs Susan Finkelstein on July 22, 2010.


title: Dustin Diamond

text: On February 11, 2011, Diamond teamed with Jordan McEntrye and Knight Wagner, losing to MsChif, Marion Fontaine and Krotch in an intergender match at AAW in Merrionette Park, Illinois. On March 17, 2011, he teamed with Bushwhacker Luke, Izzy Slapawitz and Doink the Clown to beat Virgil, Ashley Sixx, Celine Jean and Sheena at TWE Rethinking Rumble in Vaughan, Ontario. He lost his final match in a tag during the main event of FTW Summer of Synn, in Ronkonkoma, New York, on July 7, 2012.


title: Dustin Diamond

text: In 2001, Diamond filed for bankruptcy in California. He moved to Port Washington, Wisconsin, in 2003. On June 13, 2006, he asked listeners of "The Howard Stern Show" to visit his website and purchase a T-shirt, reading "I paid $15.00 to save Screeech's house" (spelling "Screech" with an extra E for copyright reasons). He said he hoped to sell 30,000 shirts in order to raise $250,000 and avoid foreclosure on his house. Diamond moved to Florida in 2018, and put his house in Port Washington up for sale the following year.


title: Dustin Diamond

text: He reportedly married longtime girlfriend Jennifer Misner in 2009, separated in 2013 and later divorced, although his death certificate lists him as having never married. They did not have any children.


title: Dustin Diamond

text: On December 26, 2014, Diamond was arrested in Ozaukee County, Wisconsin, for possession of a switchblade knife, which he was alleged to have pulled during a bar altercation in which a man was stabbed. Amanda Schutz, his fiancée, was found guilty of disorderly conduct and fined $500. On May 29, 2015, he was convicted of two misdemeanors: carrying a concealed weapon and disorderly conduct. He was cleared of the most serious charge, recklessly endangering public safety. On June 25, he was sentenced to four months in jail. He served three months and was released on probation, though his probation agent later determined that he had violated his terms and he was arrested again in May 2016.


title: Dustin Diamond

text: In early January 2021, Diamond was diagnosed with extensive stage four small cell carcinoma of the lungs. He completed one round of chemotherapy in Cape Coral, Florida, but died from the disease on February 1, 2021, at age 44.


title: Dustin Diamond

text: After Diamond's death, Dan Block, the founder of Insurance King, partnered with Josh Bilicki, driver of the #52 Rick Ware Racing Ford to run a tribute car for Diamond, finishing 18th in the 2021 Verizon 200 at the Brickyard. Block and Diamond were close friends, and Block would say of Diamond "Everyone he was surrounded with was because of who he was," Block said. "He had a few people who were around him because of the person. The people who were treating him not like Screech, could talk to him and give him tough love ... he really didn't have many of us around him. It definitely went above and beyond the call of a business relationship."


title: Dancing with the Stars (American TV series)

text: Dancing with the Stars is an American dance competition television series that premiered on June 1, 2005, on ABC. It is the U.S. version of the UK series "Strictly Come Dancing", and one of several iterations of the "Dancing with the Stars" franchise. The show pairs celebrities with professional dancers. Each couple performs predetermined dances and competes against the others for judges' points and audience votes. The couple receiving the lowest combined total of judges' points and audience votes is eliminated each week until only the champion dance pair remains.


text: The show was hosted by Tom Bergeron from its inception until 2019. Lisa Canning was co-host in the first season, Samantha Harris co-hosted seasons two through nine, Brooke Burke-Charvet in seasons ten through seventeen, and Erin Andrews from season eighteen through twenty-eight. Since the twenty-ninth season, model Tyra Banks has served as host of the show. Starting with the thirty-first season, Alfonso Ribeiro joined as co-host.


text: The 30th season of the show aired September–November 2021. On April 8, 2022, it was announced that, beginning with the 31st season, "Dancing with the Stars" would move from ABC to Disney+.


text: Tom Bergeron (who was also hosting "America's Funniest Home Videos", also on ABC, at the time of the show's debut) was the host for the show's first 28 seasons, beginning with its premiere in 2005. In season 1, his co-host was Lisa Canning. She was replaced by Samantha Harris for seasons 2 through 9 (2006–2009), who was then replaced by Brooke Burke-Charvet from seasons 10 through 17 (2010–2013). Erin Andrews took over as co-host starting in season 18 (2014). Drew Lachey served as a temporary replacement for Harris during season 5 (2007) during her absence for 3 weeks due to maternity leave. Leah Remini filled in for Andrews in week 6 of season 19, due to commitments with the 2014 World Series and filled in for her again in weeks 6 and 7 of season 21 for the 2015 World Series. Season 19 champion Alfonso Ribeiro filled in for Bergeron on week 4 of season 21, when Bergeron was absent to be with his ailing father.


text: On July 13, 2020, Bergeron announced in a tweet that he had been let go from the series. ABC and BBC Studios made an official announcement shortly afterwards saying Andrews would also be exiting the program. The following day, model and host Tyra Banks was announced to be joining the show as host in addition to serving as an executive producer for the twenty-ninth season. On July 14, 2022, it was announced that Ribeiro would join Banks as co-host for the thirty-first season.


text: The regular judges are Len Goodman, who serves as head judge, Carrie Ann Inaba, and Bruno Tonioli. Goodman was absent for much of season 19, all of season 21, much of season 23 and all of season 29. Julianne Hough, who was a professional dancing partner for seasons 4–8, was added as a full-time judge on the panel for three seasons, 19–21, after having been a guest judge in the previous two seasons. She did not return for season 22. Hough did return as a full-time judge for seasons 23 and 24 but did not return subsequently. Julianne's brother, Derek Hough, replaced regular head judge Len Goodman for season 29, as Goodman was unable to be in Los Angeles due to COVID-19 travel restrictions, though he was able to "share his ballroom expertise" from England during the season via pre-taped clips. Several former contestants appeared as judges in episode 200 (in season 11), including Hélio Castroneves, Mel B, Drew Lachey, Gilles Marini, Kelly Osbourne, and Emmitt Smith. Other celebrities, most often those who are associated with the world of dancing, former professional dancers, and past contestants have appeared as the fourth judge or in absence of one of the main judges, including Paula Abdul, Donnie Burns, Nick Carter, Cher, Maksim Chmerkovskiy, Michael Flatley, Kevin Hart, Jessie J, Rashad Jennings, Baz Luhrmann, Ricky Martin, Idina Menzel, Abby Lee Miller, Mandy Moore, Olivia Newton-John, Kenny Ortega, Donny Osmond, Pitbull, Redfoo, Alfonso Ribeiro, Robin Roberts, David Ross, Shania Twain, Leah Remini and Zendaya.


text: The seventh episode of Season 31 marked the first time five judges were ever featured on the panel at once, when Michael Bublé appeared as both a performer and bonus judge for a themed night featuring his music. Goodman announced during the Season 31 Semifinals that he would be retiring from the show at the end of the season.


text: For 17 seasons, the Harold Wheeler orchestra and singers provided the live music for the show. On February 7, 2014, it was announced that Ray Chew would be brought in as band leader, bringing with him a new band of instrumentalists and singers.


text: A total of 367 celebrities have appeared in the 31 seasons of the series. For each season, the celebrities are paired with a professional partner who instructs them in the various dances each week and competes alongside them in the televised competition. A total of 49 professional partners have appeared alongside celebrities, some for only one season (mostly in the earliest seasons). The professional who has competed on the most seasons is Cheryl Burke, with 25 seasons.


text: In season 12, the show introduced the troupe, consisting of professional dancers who perform on the show but are not paired with celebrity partners. The first troupe in season 12 included Oksana Dmytrenko, Tristan MacManus, Peta Murgatroyd, Kiki Nyemchek, Nicole Volynets, and Ted Volynets. Other past troupe members include Artur Adamski, Brandon Armstrong, Lindsay Arnold, Alan Bersten, Sharna Burgess, Henry Byalikov, Witney Carson, Brittany Cherry, Dasha Chesnokova, Artem Chigvintsev, Hayley Erbert, Sasha Farber, Sofia Ghavami, Shannon Holtzapffel, Dennis Jauch, Jenna Johnson, Daniella Karagach, Kiril Kulish, Vladislav Kvartin, Morgan Larson, Keo Motsepe, Sonny Fredie-Pedersen, Gleb Savchenko, Emma Slater, Britt Stewart, and Julz Tocker.


text: The troupe was brought back for season 31 after not having one for three seasons. The troupe members included D'Angelo Castro, Kateryna Klishyna, Ezra Sosa, and Alexis Warr.


text: In season 30, two professional dancers, Sofia Ghavami and Ezra Sosa, joined the cast. Both dancers are not paired with a celebrity partner, but are instead showcased as part of the competing couples' dances throughout the season. They are also prepared to step in if a pro is unable to compete.


text: In the first two seasons, only the overall ranking between competitors by the judges and the public was relevant. In the third season and all subsequent seasons, the scoring system has also made the exact scores relevant.


text: The scoring begins with the judges' marks. Each judge gives a numeric score from 1 to 10, for a total score of 3 to 30 or 40. The scoring was altered for the "all-star" season 15, during which judges could give scores at 1/2-point intervals from 0.5 to 10, for a total score of 1.5 to 30. When multiple performances are scored, only the cumulative total counts. The contestants' judges' shares are calculated as the percentage of the total number of points awarded to all contestants that evening. (For example, if a team earned 20 pts on a night when the judges awarded 200 pts, their judges' share would be 20/200 = 10%.) This percentage is then added to the percentage of North American votes received by each contestant. The two couples with the lowest scoring are identified at the end of the show, and the couple with the lowest combined total gets eliminated. Season 8 added an occasional 'dance-off', in which contestants could re-perform one of their dances, in an effort to improve their judges' score. This was later discontinued. The first perfect score of the season never occurred in the first or second week of the competition.


text: Public voting is conducted via a toll-free number, the ABC website, and, most recently, text messages and Facebook; contestants can vote during and immediately after each performance show. The maximum number of votes per voter per medium is equal to the number of couples performing that night, or five votes, whichever is larger. In April 2010, it was revealed that former contestant Kate Gosselin had e-mailed friends and family asking them to vote as many as 10 times each. In November 2010, "The Washington Post" reported that online voting appeared not to require a valid email address, and accordingly that numerous votes apparently could be cast by one person.


text: In several cases where ESPN coverage of "Monday Night Football" airs instead on an ABC affiliate in an NFL team's home market, the program is delayed to air immediately after that station's local news, "Jimmy Kimmel Live", and "Nightline", and a voting window confined only to the area codes of the pre-empted market is opened up to allow affected viewers to still put their votes in for the competition, though this is on a market-by-market basis (in some markets, an alternate sister station or digital subchannel carries the program live as scheduled).


text: Seasons 1 and 3 featured only two couples in the final week instead of three. Starting with season 16, four couples made it into the final week, although the top three finalists proceeded to dance one more time for the judges after the fourth-place couple was announced. In seasons 20, 22, 24, and 26 there were three couples in the final week, but in seasons 21, 23, 25, 27, 28, 29, 30 and 31 there were four.


text: Starting in season 28, the two couples with the lowest combined total of judges' scores and viewer voting percentages are at the bottom two and in jeopardy of being eliminated. In these seasons, the judges have the ability to save one of the bottom two couples from elimination. If three couples are in danger of elimination, the couple with the lowest combined total of judges' scores and viewer votes is eliminated and the other two couples will face judges' decision, who have to vote to save one couple from elimination.


text: The scores presented below represent the best overall accumulative average scores the celebrities gained each series. Seasons having a maximum of 40 points (19, 20, 23, 24, 30 and 31) have been converted to a 30-point base. These averages do not reflect scores given by guest judges.


text: The scores presented below represent the worst overall accumulative average score the celebrities gained each series.


text: The best and worst performances in each dance according to the judges' marks (out of 30) are as follows. Scores given by guest judges have not been included.


text: Shawn Johnson danced her Paso doble/Tango fusion dance with Mark Ballas instead of her partner Derek Hough due to him being injured.<br>


text: James Hinchcliffe danced his Viennese Waltz with Jenna Johnson instead of his partner Sharna Burgess due to her being injured.<br>


text: Nastia Liukin danced her Jive and Quickstep with Sasha Farber instead of her partner Derek Hough due to him being injured.<br>


text: For the switch-up week, Alexa PenaVega got a perfect score with Derek Hough instead of her original partner Mark Ballas.


text: This is a list of the couples who never received an individual score lower than 8 (excluding team dances).


text: ^Mark Ballas has the most partners to achieve this feat with four, while Valentin Chmerkovskiy has three, and Cheryl Burke and Derek Hough each have two.


text: This is a list of the couples who scored the highest in their first week. Scores out of 40 were adjusted to a 30-point scale.


text: This is a list of the earliest perfect scores received throughout the season. Season 26 (Athletes) is excluded due to the shorter competition.


text: On the April 18, 2006, episode of the "Howard Stern Radio Show", Stern's wife Beth said that she was guaranteed to earn $125,000 for just appearing on "DWTS" (in season 3) and could earn up to more than double the original sum, depending on how long she lasted on the program.


text: In season 21, Bindi Irwin had her payments withheld by a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge because she was a minor, which therefore required her parents to sign-off on the contract. But although her mother signed, the contract lacked her father's signature, so the judge refused to validate the contract, despite Irwin's father being the world-famous naturalist Steve Irwin, whose death in 2006 had been widely covered in the news/media. The judge later validated the contract once Steve Irwin's death certificate was presented to the court, resulting in Bindi receiving a $350,000 paycheck from the show.


text: The first person to withdraw from competition was Romeo in season 2. His father, Master P, took his place in the competition before the beginning of broadcasts, being partnered with Ashly DelGrosso. However, Romeo later competed in season 12 and finished in 5th place. He was partnered with Chelsie Hightower.


text: On week six in season three, Sara Evans cited her divorce as the reason for leaving the competition. No one was eliminated that week. Another withdrawal occurred during the run-up to season four on February 28, when Vincent Pastore withdrew from the competition after only one week of training. Pastore said he did not realize how much work was needed during a ten-week period, and that he was not up to the physical demands of the show. He was replaced on March 2 by Pixar voice actor John Ratzenberger who was partnered with Edyta Sliwinska.


text: In season seven, Misty May-Treanor withdrew from the competition in week three, after rupturing her Achilles tendon when rehearsing her jive with her partner, Maksim Chmerkovskiy. She did not perform the routine at all nor was she scored for it; no one else was eliminated that week.


text: In season eight, Jewel and Nancy O'Dell were injured before the season even began and could not compete. Jewel was diagnosed with fractured tibias in both legs; she came back later in the season to perform "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" on a results show. O'Dell suffered from a torn knee cartilage. They were replaced by Holly Madison and Melissa Rycroft who would be dancing with their partners for the rest of the season (Dmitry Chaplin and Tony Dovolani).


text: Tom DeLay, in season nine, withdrew in week three of competition due to a full stress fracture that had developed in both feet from an earlier pre-stress fracture in one foot. DeLay was declared safe before he announced his withdrawal during the October 6, 2009, results show. Debi Mazar was still eliminated that night despite DeLay's departure.


text: In season sixteen, Olympic figure skating champion Dorothy Hamill had to withdraw from the competition due to doctor's orders for a spinal injury. A cyst had developed near her lower spine, and was pinching off the nerve in that area. Either boxing champion Victor Ortiz or reality TV star Lisa Vanderpump would have been eliminated, but Hamill withdrew before the results could be announced, meaning that no one was eliminated that week.


text: In season eighteen, week three, actor Billy Dee Williams withdrew, by advice from a doctor, due to a chronic back problem (which resulted in no elimination that week).


text: In season twenty-one, week three, reality TV star Kim Zolciak-Biermann was forced to withdraw from the competition after suffering a blood clot which resulted in a mini stroke (which resulted in no elimination that week). Tamar Braxton also withdrew from the season due to blood clots in her lungs making it the first season to have two withdrawals in it.


text: In season twenty eight, Christie Brinkley withdrew from the competition a week before the season premiere, due to injuring her arm during rehearsal and needing sudden surgery. She was replaced by her daughter, Sailor with only a few days to practice prior to the season premiere. Later that season, Ray Lewis withdrew from the competition in the third week due to a toe injury he sustained during rehearsal that needed surgery. This is the second season to have two withdrawals.


text: In Season 29 during the 8th week, television host Jeannie Mai withdrew from the show after being hospitalized for epiglottitis. As a result, the double elimination that was supposed to happen did not take place. Only one couple, Chrishell Stause and Gleb Savchenko, were eliminated that night.


text: In Season 31 during the 5th week, movie star Selma Blair withdrew from the show to prevent her health with MS from getting more deteriorated. This marks the first time where a celebrity got the first perfect score of the season and withdrew on the same episode. As a result, there were no elimination that first night of the 5th week.


text: Beginning in season 7, viewers had the opportunity to vote for their favorite professional dancers (or in some cases former contestants) to perform a particular style of dance to a song, also of their choice. An online contest is also usually held so that viewers can submit drawings of outfits for the performance.