Wikipedia:Top 25 Report/July 9 to 15, 2023

Most Popular Wikipedia Articles of the Week (July 9 to 15, 2023) edit

Prepared with commentary by Igordebraga, TheJoebro64, and Ollieisanerd.

⭠ Last week's report → Next week's report

New month, plenty of new subjects related to sports, scandals and movies.

Rank	Article	Views	Notes/about
1	Huw Edwards	2,240,811	Similar to the Phillip Schofield scandal that happened recently, this Welsh news reader for the BBC was revealed to be the man behind The Sun's allegations that a well-known BBC presenter had paid a 17-year old tens of thousands of British pounds for sexually explicit images, which they then allegedly used to fund their cocaine addiction. The police said that they found no evidence of criminal conduct. Edwards was suspended and was reported to be in hospital with depression.
2	Oppenheimer (film)	1,629,598	Christopher Nolan's latest film, bound to get critics raving because of its production values and ears bleeding because of Nolan's obsession with terrible sound mixing. I'm likely going to watch it as a double feature.
3	J. Robert Oppenheimer	1,580,213	You guessed it, the subject of #2. I don't have anything of note to say about him, so I'll let Harry S. Truman do the talking.
4	Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One	1,491,335	Secret agent Ethan Hunt returns for his seventh go in trying to save the world - with the threat this time being a rogue AI (as #18 shows, a fairly relevant topic!) - while driving dangerously, jumping off incredibly high things, and wearing masks that downright turn him into other people. Only this time, as the "Part One" in the title makes clear, it's not a complete story so moviegoers will have to wait until June to see the conclusion - though in the movie's favor, it at least cuts at a reasonable point instead of doing like Spider-Man: Across the Spiderverse and closing in the middle of a scene. Delivering the same spy intrigue and unbelievable stunts of the previous movies, Dead Reckoning was acclaimed by critics and had a strong opening week earning over $200 million worldwide, and it's bound to keep making money if last year's Top Gun: Maverick shows how much of a draw Tom Cruise remains.
5	Sound of Freedom (film)	1,439,425	An action movie based (very, very loosely) on Timothy Ballard's (pictured) Operation Underground Railroad. It's gotten decent reviews and exceeded expectations at the box office, though it's attracted controversy over whether it promotes QAnon conspiracy theories (not helped by Ballard and star Jim Caviezel having publicly endorsed some of QAnon's more extreme beliefs).
6	Mission: Impossible (film series)	1,013,011	In 1996, Tom Cruise co-produced an adaptation of an old TV series about spies. It's still running strong nearly three decades later while providing many ways for Cruise to defy death, be it scaling a mountain with his bare hands, being thrown around cars in a freeway, climbing the tallest building in the world, hanging from a plane door as the thing takes off, a HALO jump in the middle of a storm and in the latest one (#4) using a motorcycle to jump off a huge cliff.
7	Chandrayaan-3	1,012,436	India launched one more lunar mission, expected to land in the Moon next month.
8	Facebook	987,743	Websites among Wikipedia's most viewed articles didn't seem like something that could still reappear. But Elon Musk just had to mishandle Twitter enough for Meta Platforms to retaliate with their equivalent Threads and bring plentiful views for the company's better known social networks.
9	Instagram	979,774
10	Carlos Alcaraz	941,375	Tennis grand slams have a tendency to bring in articles here, so in comes the current #1 in the ATP rankings as he reached the Wimbledon final. Considering the Spaniard won the game, expect even more views next week.
11	Deaths in 2023	941,343	And I find it kind of funny I find it kind of sad The dreams in which I'm dying are the best I've ever had...
12	Markéta Vondroušová	927,474	Back to the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club, along with the tournament itself we have the two finalists of the women's tournament: a Czech who just two years after winning the Olympic silver got her first Grand Slam title, and the Tunisian who also lost last year's Wimbledon final. Plus, the Serbian in the running for the greatest tennis player ever who reached the male decision, lost to #10.
13	Ons Jabeur	915,309
14	Wimbledon Championships	900,884
15	Novak Djokovic	878,596
16	Napoleon	870,209	The French emperor will be portrayed by Joaquin Phoenix in Ridley Scott's upcoming film Napoleon, which had its first trailer released this week. Scott usually alternates between good movies and bad movies, and his last movie was pretty bad, so this one will probably be good.
17	Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny	832,400	Indiana Jones came back to fight Nazis in 1969 accompanied by his goddaughter (whose portrayer will always earn this here writer's contempt for creating Fleabag), and the fifth movie has not been the same runaway success - in North America, by its third week it has fallen to fourth in the box office (behind #4, #5 and Insidious: The Red Door, and right above the surprisingly steady Elemental), while worldwide it just matched the enormous $300 million budget - and also divided fans.
18	ChatGPT	817,018	Pageviews for The Idol sank like a stone, as after topping this report for a whole month this week's numbers were only 156k. A great counterpoint in keeping interest is the chatbot that appeared every single week this year, helped by the fact that Hollywood has gone on strike partially for feeling studios will use AI to screw over writers and actors.
19	Christopher Eubanks	767,379	At #14 this American player had his best Grand Slam so far, reaching the quarterfinals.
20	Barbie (film)	734,411	Ah yes, the other big release that will hit theaters the same day as #2. For what's worth, star Margot Robbie and writer-director Greta Gerwig have already taken pictures with their Oppenheimer tickets, and #3's portrayer Cillian Murphy made it clear he will watch their movie too.
21	George Michael	634,334	Seven years after he had his Last Christmas, the origins of this widely successful singer were chronicled in a Netflix documentary about the pop duo he headed, Wham!
22	Elina Svitolina	629,658	#12's semifinal adversary was this Ukrainian who less than a year after giving birth has come back strong, eliminating in Wimbledon three (counting the doubles rankings, four) women who topped the WTA rankings, including the current #1 and another who received boos from the crowd given her country's involvement in invading Svitolina's one (which in turn led a compatriot who #13 defeated in her semifinal to ask for some respect).
23	List of current BBC newsreaders and reporters	628,848	People were probably checking this article before #1 was revealed to be behind the allegations.
24	Tom Cruise	624,417	The star of #4, who completed 61 years on the 3rd, and is still doing unbelievable stunts that people a third of his age wouldn't attempt.
25	Leslie Van Houten	595,529	Keeping off #26 Taylor Swift is a much less well-regarded woman, one of the murderers in the Manson family that was paroled after 53 years in prison.