An all-star team is a group of people all having a high level of performance in their field. Originating in sports, it has since drifted into

vernacular Vernacular is the ordinary, informal, spoken language, spoken form of language, particularly when perceptual dialectology, perceived as having lower social status or less Prestige (sociolinguistics), prestige than standard language, which is mor ...

and has been borrowed heavily by the

entertainment industry Entertainment is a form of activity that holds the attention and Interest (emotion), interest of an audience or gives pleasure and delight. It can be an idea or a task, but it is more likely to be one of the activities or events that have deve ...

Sports

"All-star" as a sports term refers to individual players named to an "all-star" roster or team representing the top performers (members of such a team were ''all

star A star is a luminous spheroid of plasma (physics), plasma held together by Self-gravitation, self-gravity. The List of nearest stars and brown dwarfs, nearest star to Earth is the Sun. Many other stars are visible to the naked eye at night sk ...

s'' from other teams) during and before the end of a season in a given sport, or to a list of top participants who played in individual sports such as

golf Golf is a club-and-ball sport in which players use various Golf club, clubs to hit a Golf ball, ball into a series of holes on a golf course, course in as few strokes as possible. Golf, unlike most ball games, cannot and does not use a standa ...

and

bowling Bowling is a Throwing sports#Target sports, target sport and recreational activity in which a player rolls a bowling ball, ball toward Bowling pin, pins (in pin bowling) or another target (in target bowling). Most references to ''bowling'' are ...

. Events limited to such honorees are referred to as "all-star games" or events. In American team sports the premier all-star games are the

Major League Baseball All-Star Game The Major League Baseball All-Star Game, also known as the "Midsummer Classic", is an annual professional baseball game sanctioned by Major League Baseball (MLB) and contested between the all-stars from the American League (AL) and National ...

NBA All-Star Game The National Basketball Association All-Star Game is the annual all-star game hosted each February by the National Basketball Association (NBA) and showcases 24 of the league's All-star, star players. Since 2022, it was held on the third Sunday of ...

(basketball),

Pro Bowl The National Football League All-Star Game (1939–1942), Pro Bowl (1951–2022), or Pro Bowl Games (since 2023) is an annual event held by the National Football League (NFL) featuring the league's All-star, star players. The format has changed ...

(football), NHL All-Star Game (hockey), and MLS All-Star Game (soccer). Many all-star teams, such as collegiate "all-conference" and All-America squads, are recognitions of performance only, without the connotation of those selected ever being teammates in a game. The closest college sports come to an "All-star" game is the annual Senior Bowl which pits the best senior

College Football College football is gridiron football that is played by teams of amateur Student athlete, student-athletes at universities and colleges. It was through collegiate competition that gridiron football American football in the United States, firs ...

players in the country against one another. These players generally go on to be drafted in the

NFL Draft The NFL draft, officially known as the Annual Player Selection Meeting, is an annual event which serves as the most common source of player recruitment in the National Football League. Each team is given a position in the drafting order in reve ...

in April. In

gaelic games Gaelic games () are a set of sports played worldwide, though they are particularly popular in Ireland, where they originated. They include Gaelic football, hurling, Gaelic handball and rounders. Football and hurling, the most popular of the s ...

, the term "all-stars" refers to the GAA GPA All Stars Awards. These awards involve picking a fantasy team consisting of the top players in each position in the various sports (

Gaelic football Gaelic football (; short name '')'', commonly known as simply Gaelic, GAA, or football, is an Irish team sport. A form of football, it is played between two teams of 15 players on a rectangular grass pitch. The objective of the sport is to score ...

, Ladies' Gaelic football,

hurling Hurling (, ') is an outdoor Team sport, team game of ancient Gaelic culture, Gaelic Irish origin, played by men and women. One of Ireland's native Gaelic games, it shares a number of features with Gaelic football, such as the field and goa ...

, rounders and camogie).

Entertainment

Cinema

The term "all star" is also used in films, often used as a form of

publicity In marketing, publicity is the public visibility or awareness for any product, service, person or organization. It may also refer to the movement of information from its source to the general public, often (but not always) via the media. The sub ...

gimmick to promote the cast of a movie in which a number of high-profile actors appear, sometimes merely in cameo roles. An archetype is the 1956 version of '' Around the World in 80 Days''.

Television

In a similar vein to sporting events, some

reality television Reality television is a genre of television programming that documents purportedly unscripted real-life situations, often starring ordinary people rather than professional actors. Reality television emerged as a distinct genre in the early 1990s ...

franchises (such as '' Dancing with the Stars,'' '' Survivor'' ,'''' and ''

RuPaul's Drag Race ''RuPaul's Drag Race'' is an American reality competition television series, the first in the Drag Race (franchise), ''Drag Race'' franchise, produced by World of Wonder (company), World of Wonder for Logo TV (season 1–8), WOW Presents Plus, ...

'')'''' have held all star seasons featuring notable contestants from previous seasons, such as champions, contestants popular among viewers, and notable contestants from international versions of the franchise. These can include entire seasons where the alumni compete against each other, or a spin-off competition with a different format. One such example—'' Survivor: Winners at War''— where to celebrate the 40th season and 20th Anniversary of the U.S. version, featured 20 winners from past seasons competing for an increased cash prize of $2,000,000. Most of its challenges were also reprised from the seasons that the cast members had originally competed in.'''' Another, example is the '' Australia V The World'' edition of '' Australian Survivor'' - in which players from the Australian version of ''Survivor'' competed against players from other versions of the show. Sometimes, all-star crossovers may be organized between contestants of multiple reality formats; the MTV series '' The Challenge'' was originally a competition spin-off of its reality shows '' The Real World'' and '' Road Rules'', but later seasons began to increasingly include alumni from other popular reality series such as '' The Amazing Race'', '' Big Brother'', '' Love Island'' and ''Survivor''. Simularly, the American version of ''

The Traitors ''The Traitors'' is a reality game show franchise created by the All3Media All3Media Limited is a British worldwide independent television, film, and digital production and distribution company based in London. The All3Media group cons ...

'' features a cast largely of former Realty TV Personalities.

Music

"All-stars" in music terms is referred to record labels or a music genre's top musical artists. An example of this includes the single " Pow 2011" by Lethal Bizzle in which all the featured artists are credited as " Grime All-Stars". Sometimes, labels organize such all-star sessions to release dedicated albums. Examples of this case are the collective

This Mortal Coil This Mortal Coil were a British music collective led by Ivo Watts-Russell, founder of the British record label 4AD. Although Watts-Russell and John Fryer were the only two official members, the band's recorded output featured a large rotat ...

under the 4AD label, or the Roadrunner United sessions by

Roadrunner Records Roadrunner Records is a Dutch–American record label focused on Heavy metal music, heavy metal and hard rock music. Founded in the Netherlands in 1980, it is now a division of Warner Music Group and is based in New York City. Formerly seen as ...

. The term is not equivalent to supergroup, which refers to a group made of already established musicians from other popular bands or with a successful solo career.

Comics

The All Star DC Comics was an imprint of ongoing

American comic book An American comic book is a thin periodical literature originating in the United States, commonly between 24 and 64 pages, containing comics. While the form originated in 1933, American comic books first gained popularity after the 1938 publ ...

titles published by

DC Comics DC Comics (originally DC Comics, Inc., and also known simply as DC) is an American comic book publisher owned by DC Entertainment, a subsidiary of Warner Bros. Discovery. DC is an initialism for "Detective Comics", an American comic book seri ...

that ran from 2005 to 2008. DC has published two titles under the All-Star banner, featuring

Batman Batman is a superhero who appears in American comic books published by DC Comics. Batman was created by the artist Bob Kane and writer Bill Finger, and debuted in Detective Comics 27, the 27th issue of the comic book ''Detective Comics'' on M ...

and

Superman Superman is a superhero created by writer Jerry Siegel and artist Joe Shuster, which first appeared in the comic book ''Action Comics'' Action Comics 1, #1, published in the United States on April 18, 1938.The copyright date of ''Action Comics ...

. The premise of the imprint was to partner DC Comics' top tier characters with the most popular and acclaimed writers and artists.

References

External links

* {{cite web , title = All Star Ensemble Casts, publisher= Hollywood.com, author=Daniel Hubschman, url = http://www.hollywood.com/news/movies/7755925/all-star-ensemble-casts?page=all, date=Feb 14, 2011 Sports terminology Film and video terminology Musical terminology