Wikipedia:Top 25 Report/June 25 to July 1, 2023

Most Popular Wikipedia Articles of the Week (June 25 to July 1, 2023)

Prepared with commentary by Igordebraga, Milowent, Ollieisanerd, and a helpful IP.

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

June ends with some new articles but still dominated by last week's disasters - including the HBO show whose controversy translated into massive views here!

Rank	Article	Views	Notes/about
1	The Idol (TV series)	5,907,348	A critic this writer here follows wrote "The Idol is the worst show in the history of television. And yes, that's saying something in the medium that brought us Here Comes Honey Boo Boo, Inhumans and The Flying Nun." This should be a great indicative of the reputation of this HBO show that just ended its 5-episode run, with the brunt of criticism leveled at co-creators Abel Tesfaye aka The Weeknd (pictured), who decided to also act and led to a heavily mocked performance as a self-help guru who takes an aspiring pop singer played by Lily-Rose Depp into a sleazy cult, and Sam Levinson, who made a creative overhaul once director Amy Seimetz was driven away as she tried to class up the joint. Reportedly, Seimetz attempted to tell the story of a woman "falling victim to a predatory industry figure and fighting to reclaim her own agency", and instead the end result became "sexual torture porn" that fails at being arousing. Audiences haven't responded that better, with regular television views that fell very short of Levinson's better known show Euphoria, and while the HBO Max numbers were higher and the Wikipedia ones reflect a fair amount of interest (only 14 articles got 5 million views in back-to-back weeks!), the overall discourse is as negative as that of reviewers.
2	Wagner Group	1,503,767	The Russian paramilitary group has been described as "Putin's private army", but its recent Wagner Group rebellion (#15) against the Russian regime is the cause of its recent focus in the news.
3	Julian Sands	1,414,881	Veteran English actor who went missing in January whilst hiking in the San Gabriel Mountains near Los Angeles. His body was discovered on June 24 by some hikers in the area where he went missing.
4	Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny	1,260,109	Indiana Jones was once planned to star in 5 movies, and it eventually became true even without Steven Spielberg and George Lucas for the latest one - just don't expect a sixth with Harrison Ford being 80, no matter if the opening sequence of this movie has a fairly convincing de-aged Indy. James Mangold directs this installment set in 1969, where Indy fights Nazis trying to recover a MacGuffin based on the Antikythera mechanism. Still with the same humor and setpieces of the other movies, along with heaps of nostalgia and some plot developments certain to displease those who complained about the aliens in the last one, Dial of Destiny got a somewhat positive response and is expected to have a great opening weekend (it's unclear if it can sustain its success and allow Disney to recoup the enormous budget of at least $250 million).
5	Titanic	1,093,946	The most famous shipwreck in history, and somehow there were people who thought James Cameron invented it for the 1997 blockbuster. Over 1500 people died in the sinking, and unfortunately it has now caused a few more indirect deaths when a submersible collapsed on the way to the wreck (#9).
6	Deaths in 2023	988,763	Deaths added to this article during the week included British journalist Dame Ann Leslie (June 25), Kazakh weightlifter Vladimir Sedov (June 26), Spanish actress Carmen Sevilla (June 27), German protestor Dietrich Wagner (June 28), American actor Alan Arkin (June 29) (#8 this week), Indian politician Bir Devinder Singh (June 30), and Ukrainian writer Victoria Amelina (July 1).
7	Elton John	980,844	After a successful career that was even celebrated with a biopic, Sir Elton is set to retire with the conclusion of the Farewell Yellow Brick Road (which became the highest-grossing tour of all time!) later this month, and his last concert in his native England was closing the 2023 edition of Glastonbury Festival.
8	Alan Arkin	946,724	An actor who died at the age of 89, leaving behind a body of work that went all the way back to the 1960s and included Little Miss Sunshine, for which he won the Academy Award, and Best Picture winner Argo, where he originates an hilariously NSFW line. Arkin's last two roles were Spenser Confidential and Minions: The Rise of Gru, and the thriller The Smack will become a posthumous release.
9	Titan submersible implosion	926,931	Down from #2 last week. Debris from the destroyed vessel was discovered on June 22, and news coverage has continued to uncover just how unsafe this craft was. The hubris of its company founder (#23) may be one of the reasons that a disaster like this has captured far more attention than the 2023 Messenia migrant boat disaster, where over 500 likely have died.
10	Yevgeny Prigozhin	884,111	The leader of #2. Prigozhin's training to be a mercenary group leader included nine years in prison in his teens and twenties.
11	ChatGPT	816,713	No particular spike in views of this article during the week, and while coming down from its #1 spot the Week of May 14-20, this just remains a solidly popular article. ChatGPT stands for "Chat Generative Pre-Trained Transformer", by the way.
12	Adipurush	785,345	Down from #4 last week. This Indian action film (shot both in Hindi and Telugu) was released on June 16 to negative reviews, but is currently #21 on the list of highest-grossing Indian films.
13	Money in the Bank (2023)	793,488	This was the 14th annual WWE Money in the Bank professional wrestling event, which was held on July 1, 2023, in London, England.
14	Eid al-Adha	765,214	Eid al-Adha is a Muslim holiday that commemorates Abraham's willingness to obey God and sacrifice his son Ishmael.
15	Wagner Group rebellion	729,393	See #2, #10. Thankfully the Russians fighting each other stopped fairly quickly, as opposed to that terrible thing that just won't end.
16	Ryan Mallett	726,408	This former professional American football player drowned while swimming at the beach in Destin, Florida, on June 27, 2023.
17	Lewis Capaldi	717,346	Four years after his chart-topper, this Scottish singer distantly related to Peter Capaldi announced he was taking a break from touring due to issues that include a recently diagnosed Tourette's syndrome, not long after a bad performance at Glastonbury Festival that forced him to ask for audience help.
18	Robert F. Kennedy Jr.	714,145	Nominally, this avid conspiracy enthusiast is a candidate for the Democratic nomination to run for President in 2024, though he's receiving lots of support from right-wing candidates.
19	2023 Cricket World Cup Qualifier	668,081	This year's ICC Men's Cricket World Cup Qualifier is running from June 18 through July 9, hosted by Zimbabwe.
20	The Flash (film)	661,017	Two superhero movies with focus on multiverses and alternate versions of heroes are currently in theaters. On the DC side, The Flash split opinions and is having box office problems in spite of a strong start, with earnings that barely surpassed the $200–220 million budget. On the Marvel one, the animation featuring all sorts of Spider-People was hailed for its ambitions and artistic merits and made over $600 million worldwide.
21	Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse	595,175
22	No Hard Feelings (2023 film)	587,912	Jennifer Lawrence took a hiatus after Dark Phoenix, in the meantime only starring in a Netflix movie and an Apple TV+ one while also having a son. She's now back in theaters in this sex comedy, playing a woman trying to sleep with an introverted nerd in exchange for a car, showcasing her comedic chops along with the lauded acting skills (not to mention a return to the butt-kicking of Katniss and Mystique when Lawrence has to beat up some thieves, only without any clothes on...). Along with mixed-to-positive reviews No Hard Feelings had a $15 million opening weekend covering a third of its budget while being only $100,000 short of beating #20, showing how much its leading lady is still a strong draw.
23	Stockton Rush	552,075	Rush killed four other people, as well as himself, in #9 given all the bad decisions taken by his company in designing Titan.
24	The Bear (TV series)	531,737	The second season of this American comedy-drama television series debuted on Hulu on June 22, 2023. If you've seen it mentioned on social media (as this author has), that's why its made the list. According to the streaming aggregator Reelgood, The Bear was the second most watched program across all platforms in the United States during the week of June 22, 2023.
25	Elemental (2023 film)	527,299	The above mentioned James Cameron film was #26, and ironically the fourth highest-grossing movie of all time had less views than a production struggling to even break $100 million domestically, namely, a Pixar animated romantic comedy between the classical elements, deemed as reminiscent of their own Inside Out along with the parent company's Zootopia.