Wikipedia:Top 25 Report/June 19 to 25, 2022

The Top 25 Report

This page contains material that is kept because it is considered humorous.
Such material is not meant to be taken seriously.

Most Popular Wikipedia Articles of the Week (June 19 to 25, 2022)

Prepared with commentary by Benmite, Igordebraga and YttriumShrew

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This week has controversial judicial decisions, politics, that war that won't end, all that remind us why it's better to just seek movies and TV shows to forget that if it's to make things harder, life finds a way.

Rank	Article	Views	Notes/about
1	Roe v. Wade	2,554,445	Well, we knew it would come, but now the shadow has truly returned. On June 24, the Supreme Court of the United States overturned Roe v. Wade, the landmark decision that effectively legalised abortion in much of the country. Abortion will now become illegal in many states, forcing millions across the country to either risk an illegal abortion or give birth against their will.
2	Juneteenth	1,304,668	After the George Floyd protests in 2020, interest in this holiday marking an end to chattel slavery across the United States (following its abolition in Texas in 1865) rose greatly, prompting Joe Biden to declare it a federal holiday the following year. A couple centuries late on that one, Joe, but at least we got there eventually, and we had our very first official celebration of Juneteenth as a country this week. Too bad slavery didn't really go away.
3	Draupadi Murmu	1,156,860	The former governor of Jharkhand earned her place on this week's list after she was selected by the nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, or BJP, as the Indian presidential nominee for the National Democratic Alliance, or NDA, a right-wing coalition led by the BJP. Winning the election, which is almost guaranteed for Murmu based on the BJP's grip on India's government, would make her India's first tribal president and the second female president.
4	Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness	1,088,839	The latest MCU installment was released on Disney+ this week.
5	Top Gun: Maverick	938,050	Tom Cruise returns as Pete "Maverick" Mitchell in a movie acclaimed for combining good character moments with impressive aerial sequences. It already passed $900 million worldwide, and could very soon become the highest-grossing movie of the year, surpassing the above.
6	Deaths in 2022	862,770	For the life of me, I cannot believe We'd ever die for these sins, we were merely freshmen
7	The Boys (TV series)	836,257	The jerk superheroes being confronted by ruthless people (who now managed to find a way to get superpowers and level the fight) keep on releasing new episodes on Prime Video, with the latest one featuring a superhero orgy that is a great reminder of Guybrush Threepwood's immortal quote "The human body is a beautiful thing. Most of the time. Ew."
8	The Umbrella Academy (TV series)	760,572	Like the above, another unconventional superhero streaming show (only instead of bawdy and profane, it's just weird and complicated) which had its third season released, only on Netflix. It even has to acknowledge real world gender transitions, as Ellen Page's Vanya is now Elliot Page's Viktor.
9	Obi-Wan Kenobi (TV series)	752,391	Disney has been churning out a lot of just-alright series in what appears to be a quantity-over-quality move on their part. This show turned out to be a case, as for all the good of bringing back Ewan McGregor, the plot was ultimately unnecessary (sure, an exiled Kenobi is a great starting point; but why have him meet Darth Vader again, when it just undermines their fatal re-encounter in the Death Star? or having Princess Leia as a child, as if she needed to have met Ben to send him a helping plea?), and the final episode had critics complaining that it just felt like a rehash of other, better Star Wars films, to which a roundtable of crotchety old rich men at Disney's HQ probably said "But you all love reboots! You keep going out to see them every time!" (#12 begs to differ...)
10	Elvis Presley	745,817	Thank you, thank you very much, Hollywood, for meeting what seems to be an annual quota for rock star biopics. This time, Elvis is about one of the very first people to bring rock 'n' roll to the masses--even if he was only able to do so after infamously stealing it from Black people-- and his rocky relationship with his manager Colonel Tom Parker. The eponymous film was directed by Baz Luhrmann, who's mostly known for flashy remakes of other, arguably better films based on books (plus a movie that only reuses a title), and stars Austin Butler, who got his start on the Disney-Nickelodeon circuit as the one-time beau(s) of Hannah Montana and Zoey Brooks. Butler stepped into the pompadoured singer's blue suede shoes, and viewers have noticed that his affected demeanor and voice as Elvis have creeped into interviews he's done long after the movie was filmed. The devil in disguise? It just might be.
11	Stranger Things	682,884	A teaser for the eagerly awaited second volume of this bingeable horror-drama's fourth season was released this week.
12	Lightyear (film)	658,071	Lightyear is flying suspiciously below the radar in most places, and let's just say our favorite Space Ranger had it better in Buzz Lightyear of Star Command, where at least he wasn't upstaged by a robot cat. It's still not cleared for takeoff in some theaters, like the 89er Theatre in Oklahoma, which received backlash after putting up a sign warning folks that there was a same-sex kiss in the film. IMO, this got slammed for the wrong reasons; we need more warnings for kisses of all kinds, but specifically the sloppy, messy ones that Hollywood habitually puts on our movie screens, not the peck depicted in Lightyear that was as innocuous as an Italian greeting. Either way, most of the people going out to see Lightyear were not families, hence why its expected opening weekend was a bit of a bomb. If this list is any indication, maybe kids just stopped wanting to be astronauts, and instead would rather be superheroes (#7), fighter pilots (#5), or cultural appropriators (#10).
13	Elon Musk	636,943	It's rare to see the richest man on the planet take such "a major L", as he would say, but this week proved that, even if money can buy you just about anything, it still can't buy you the love and respect of your children. This was evidenced by Musk's daughter petitioning to legally change her first and last name back in April in order to affirm her gender and to distance herself as much as possible from the Tesla magnate. The court documents for it only made the rounds this week, and I guess she must not have realized that publicly attempting to change her last name would get her a lot more attention in connection to her father than if she simply hadn't. Happy Father's Day to Elon, though.
14	2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine	627,785	The Russian invasion of Ukraine succeeded in its temporary end goal of forcing the Ukrainians out of Sievierodonetsk, and celebrated by reorganising their military.
15	Stranger Things (season 4)	601,761	The first seven episodes, concerning a small Indiana town again being targeted by a dark dimension, a man being rescued from a gulag, and a telekinetic girl losing and trying to regain her powers, came out last month. Two more episodes to close it off come out on July 1.
16	2022 NBA draft	594,261	After a final that this here writer couldn't care less about (17 titles versus 7 finals in 9 years), the NBA is loading up for the next year, with the Orlando Magic using the top pick in the Italian-American Paolo Banchero.
17	Jurassic World Dominion	577,689	In June 2018, we had a new Jurassic Park movie and the FIFA World Cup. Four years later, just the latter returns (football is only in November to avoid scorching temperatures), and even then it was supposed to come out in 2021, but was pushed back due to pandemic delays. In spite of negative reviews - among other things, the script is busy and doesn't give that much focus to the dinosaurs that roped audiences in to begin with - Jurassic World is still making as much money as possible, even getting packaged as part of a double bill to help a reviled new adaptation of Firestarter get some extra bucks.
18	Ezra Miller	561,653	Fall from grace doesn't even begin to describe it, but Miller's career is definitely Flashing in front of their eyes. After a hectic trip to Hawaii this year, which involved the nonbinary actor chucking chairs and hurling barbs at people who were just looking for a nice tropical vacation, they got accused of grooming by the family of an 18-year-old Native American activist in North Dakota. This week, a couple in Massachusetts got granted a protective order for their 12-year-old. The couple was drunkenly scolded for their parenting by Miller, who lived 40 miles away on a farm in Vermont, as the relationship between Miller and the child apparently became inappropriate. Then, not long after, Rolling Stone published findings that on that farm, Miller had a family (hold for the ee-i-ee-i-oh) of three children and their mother shacked up with them, while the children's father fretted away in Hawaii. The mother claims that Miller was providing "healing" for Miller, which, based on previous testimonies about the actor, likely comes in pill form. Almost Waco siege-levels of firearms and ammunition were also found in the farm next to some stuffed animals, leading the mother's 12-month-old baby to nearly bite the bullet, both literally and figuratively. I would make another We Need to Talk About Kevin joke if it didn't tell itself so easily.
19	Vikram (2022 film)	561,305	Much like another 2022 release (#5), this film is a spiritual sequel to its namesake 1986 film, and follows a retired secret agent trying to take down a drug syndicate. The film also kicks off a cinematic universe with a sequel to follow.
20	Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization	544,523	With Roe v. Wade out, Dobbs v. Jackson is now the lay of the land.
21	Spiderhead	544,309	Although what I originally guessed was a Spider-Man spinoff was in fact very much not that, it has plenty of other things to make up for its dearth of web-slinging. For example, Chris Hemsworth in Jeffrey Dahmer glasses, and... well, what more could you want from a movie? Probably a lot more, but it also has some shady carceral drug-testing on an inmate named Jeff (Miles Teller), another inmate named Lizzy (Jurnee Smollett), et al. (some other inmates played by mostly nameless actors who may or may not become name-ful in the next few years.) Reception has been lukewarm, as can be summarized by the film's top Letterboxd review: "A Netflix film that will be trending #1 the week it's released and then forgotten about a week later." One of many, pal.
22	Matt Fitzpatrick	530,683	The U.S. Open is perhaps the only event to bring golfers this much attention on the list other than the PGA Championship, so when you see one, you can guess that they probably won one of the two. Fitzpatrick, an English putter with almost a decade of experience under his belt, was crowned the champion of the former competition this week, marking his first major championship win.
23	Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2	495,120	This comedy-horror film starring Tabu (pictured) is now the second-biggest Bollywood film of the year, although it's still a way off The Kashmir Files.
24	Caleb Swanigan	481,751	Basketball is back on the list again, but this time, it's not for huge wins, but for huge losses. Swanigan, a power forward for several NBA teams (most notably the Portland Trail Blazers) and an MVP for the Purdue Boilermakers, died this week. Of what, we can't be sure, since all any sources are willing to share is that it was from "natural causes", but dying naturally at 25 without any sort of underlying condition just doesn't happen unless you're a time traveler from 1000 B.C. Unfortunately, morons have already brought back the fallacious COVID-19 vaccine theories regarding his death, and, if true, they could be a huge win for those spreading them, since it would be the first time ever that someone actually died solely from the vaccine. (Hint: That's not how it happened.)
25	Warren Jeffs	479,472	He's the infamous polygamist leader of the controversial Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, a sect of Mormon fundamentalism which has often been identified as a white supremacist cult, who was charged with child sexual assault for forcing underage girls in the Church to marry adult men. Now, he's also one of the subjects of Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey, Netflix's newest addition to the "cult-o-mania" genre, which was released two weeks ago. What a career!

Exclusions

This list excludes the Wikipedia main page, non-article pages (such as redlinks), and anomalous entries (such as DDoS attacks or likely automated views). Since mobile view data became available to the Report in October 2014, we exclude articles that have almost no mobile views (5–6% or less) or almost all mobile views (94–95% or more) because they are very likely to be automated views based on our experience and research of the issue. Please feel free to discuss any removal on the talk page if you wish.