Wikipedia:Top 25 Report/July 16 to 22, 2023

Most Popular Wikipedia Articles of the Week (July 16 to 22, 2023)[edit]

Prepared with commentary by Igordebraga, Spinixster, and Ollieisanerd.

⭠ Last week's report → Next week's report A Report heavily shaped by the film industry, particularly a very expected and odd pairing of movie premieres, completed by sports, death and that chatbot that won't leave.

Rank	Article	Views	Notes/about
1	J. Robert Oppenheimer	4,921,587	Christopher Nolan tackled a biopic for the first time, and the result has the expected epic results with impeccable production values and an outstanding cast. Unfortunately, Oppenheimer also focuses less on the Manhattan Project, where physicist Julius Robert Oppenheimer helped develop the atomic bomb, than on the Oppenheimer security hearing where the Congress tried to determine if he was a communist, making much of the three hour runtime (particularly once Trinity explodes by the two hour mark) be boring politics that can certainly drive viewers to wash it off by immediately following things with the diametrically opposed other big release of the week (#4). Still, it had an overall approval of audiences and reviewers and is expected to make much money, specially from IMAX screens.
2	Oppenheimer (film)	4,779,203
3	Carlos Alcaraz	2,781,884	At Wimbledon, this Spanish tennis player reminded us why he's the current leader of the ATP rankings by beating the living legend at #5 at just 20, his second Grand Slam while breaking a sequence since 2003 where only the same four guys won in the English lawn.
4	Barbie (film)	2,609,472	If you're seeing an unusual amount of people wearing pink, blame this movie that takes Mattel's famed doll and adds a satirical approach reminiscent of The Lego Movie, albeit in a way that is certainly not aimed at children (be it discussing the patriarchy or mentioning Barbie's below waist anatomy...). Much praise was given to how Greta Gerwig made Barbie such a funny and subversive flick, and given being more recognizable while having lower content ratings compared to #2 it will certainly beat it at the box office, with the opening weekend alone nearly doubling the already impressive $80 million of Oppenheimer.
5	Novak Djokovic	1,697,593	After winning the first two Grand Slams of the year, 'Djoko' was stopped by #3 in the Wimbledon final, preventing him from both matching the 8 titles of Roger Federer and taking back the top of the ATP rankings.
6	Jane Birkin	1,506,323	Died this week aged 76. Birkin was a British actress and singer who was known for her romantic relationship with French musician and actor Serge Gainsbourg. She later acquired French citizenship and achieved a successful career in French cinema.
7	Tony Bennett	1,466,736	One of the last-surviving jazz crooners of the 1950s and 60s, Bennett passed away from Alzheimer's disease this week at age 96. Bennett worked in the music industry for over 80 years, during which time he earned 20 Grammys and sold more than 50 million records worldwide, his songs becoming part of the Great American Songbook. His family said that he kept singing till the end, the last song he ever sung being "Because of You".
8	Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One	1,407,946	Tom Cruise complained that #2 would be taking IMAX screens away from his movie, the seventh in a series that has been running strong since 1996, but nonetheless was already shown holding tickets to both it and #4, wanting to support the film industry he so loves and like Ethan Hunt in the movie, is not dealing well with the threat of artificial intelligence. Dead Reckoning Part One was hailed as one of the best in the franchise and is nearing $400 million worldwide, a great indicator that many can't wait for Part Two next June.
9	Christopher Nolan	1,129,085	The writer-director of #2, who has a pechant for creating incredible imagery without computer graphics - which in the case of Oppenheimer included the climactic detonation!
10	Sound of Freedom (film)	1,099,731	Compared to #2, #4, and #8 this thriller is a much more modest deal, priced at only $15 million when all the others have budgets in the nine digits. Yet it has kept itself steady at the box office, never falling below third while already breaking the $100 million mark. Maybe now its makers can find international distribution deals so overseas moviegoers can find out if Sound of Freedom earned all this success.
11	Cillian Murphy	1,097,236	#1's portrayer, working with #9 again, a collaboration dating back to Scarecrow in Batman Begins and its sequels. Jokes were raised on how the marketing to #4 was all those highly visible pink things while #2 simply revealed new pictures of Murphy looking very disheveled.
12	Deaths in 2023	939,617	From #7's repertoire: Ev'ry Time We Say Goodbye I wonder why a little Why the gods above me Who must be in the know Think so little of me They allow you to go
13	Margot Robbie	923,408	The star of #4 who, fun fact, is reportedly going to be co-starring alongside Ryan Gosling in another movie.
14	2023 FIFA Women's World Cup	832,052	Women's football (or soccer in its most successful nation) sees the return of its premier nations championship, that like the Olympics 2 years ago is not friendly to the sleep of western hemisphere fans due to being held in Australia and New Zealand.
15	Mission: Impossible (film series)	768,445	#8 is the latest in this franchise combining the spy intrigue of an old TV series with #23 doing some unbelievable stunts. This is a great opportunity to rewatch them, aside from maybe the second.
16	Greta Gerwig	751,552	Once this actress turned into writing-directing, the result were two Best Picture nominees, the semi-autobiographical Lady Bird and an adaptation of Little Women. Now movie fans wonder if she'll again be an awards competitor for #4, given Gerwig and partner Noah Baumbach pulled a surprisingly smart movie out of Barbie dolls.
17	Katherine Oppenheimer	723,388	Two of #2's characters, #1's wife, played by Emily Blunt (meaning that the German-American couple were portrayed by two actors from the British Isles), and the commissioner of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission who would then lead the security hearing, played by Robert Downey Jr. wearing heavy make-up.
18	Lewis Strauss	678,229
19	Lionel Messi	659,731	'La Pulguita' who finally cemented his legacy with the 2022 FIFA World Cup started off the closing part of his career winning some dollars at Major League Soccer while reuniting with Sergio Busquets, who played with Leo at FC Barcelona. Messi even scored right in his first game for #25 with a free kick!
20	Wimbledon Championships	649,899	The oldest, most prestigious tennis tournament, held in London's All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club. To the left are this year's champions in singles, #3 and Markéta Vondroušová.
21	ChatGPT	599,181	Nuclear weapons (#1, et. al) were the biggest fear of the 20th century. Artificial intelligence is the one for the 21st. (The Terminator is a reminder of how bad it gets when one decides to use the other)
22	Barbie	582,843	The source of #4. And for everyone who is having "Barbie Girl" stuck in their heads (even if the movie itself doesn't feature the song aside from a rap sampling it - like me, Mattel disapproves the song!), mind I remind that Aqua made this infinitely better track?
23	Tom Cruise	570,152	The star of #8, who hopes the movie will have the staying power of last year's Top Gun: Maverick or that the strike I mentioned in its entry ends so he can finish filming Part Two.
24	Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny	565,893	Like #22, Indiana Jones can be tracked back to an Aqua song, and related to #1 et. al he survived a nuclear blast in his previous movie. And the arrival of both movies might be the last thing to drag down the underwhelming box office of the fifth installment that only now surpassed the equally divisive second movie. Still, here's to him.
25	Inter Miami CF	562,094	Keeping off Ryan Gosling, the Ken to #13, is #19's new team, founded by David Beckham and whose uniforms can certainly be used to attend screenings of #4 (their stadium is even named DRV PNK Stadium!).

Exclusions

Instagram (921,287) and Facebook (685,539) - Look, Threads can only bring its sister social networks so far here, let's put them along with YouTube in the pages to ignore. (and wonder if next week what led to Threads' existence being again mishandled by Musk will enter the Report...)
Flipkart (576,440) - While on websites, India apparently followed the old 'search for a website and enter its Wikipedia page instead' regarding this e-commerce company about to start a big sale. And the 96% average of mobile views enters the exclusion criteria.