Wikipedia:Top 25 Report/July 12 to 18, 2015

Top 25 Report: Most Popular Wikipedia Articles of the Week (July 12 to 18, 2015)

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Summary: When I was a kid, being a nerd meant wanting to go to Pluto. Well now we have gone to Pluto and all my fellow nerds want to talk about is Comic Con and the latest Marvel movie. Seriously; the trailer for Suicide Squad alone took five slots on this list. It seems seeing a trailer for a movie they're all going to see anyway is more important than viewing landscapes as yet unseen by human eyes and unlikely to be seen again. And no, my peevishness has nothing to do with my being the chief editor of the Pluto article. Well, maybe a bit. Another running theme is the return (with a vengeance) of Indian pop culture, with four slots, the highest number to date. All this collective excitement gave this list its highest entry point since Oscars week.

As prepared by Serendipodous, for the week of July 12 to 18, 2015, the 25 most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the report of the most viewed pages, were:

Rank	Article	Class	Views	Image	Notes
1	Suicide Squad		1,817,973		DC Comics' ramshackle crew of pressganged supervillains, forced to do the will of a shadowy organization or let their heads explode, are the stars of one of the most anticipated films in the upcoming DC Cinematic Universe. This week, at San Diego Comic Con, Warner Bros released the film's first trailer, which, from the Wikipedia views, seems to have gotten the fans more excited than the upcoming Batman vs. Superman movie.
2	Joaquín Guzmán Loera		1,671,857		This ruthless narco-trafficker, boss of the Sinaloa cartel and reportedly the world's 14th richest man, became an enduring folk hero and the subject of a hundred "narcocorridos" (folk songs glorying the deeds of the great drug lords) after he escaped from a top-security prison in 2001. He was on the lamb for 13 years before his recapture in 2014. And now, get ready to tune up your guitars mariachis, because he just did it again. On 11 July, he escaped his prison cell through a tunnel under the shower; by sheer coincidence the only blind spot for the surveillance cameras. If, at this point, you're having flashbacks to The Shawshank Redemption, ditch them: the tunnel was professionally constructed, contained electric lighting, was 1.7 metres tall and 1.5 km long, and included a motorcycle. And no one noticed it being built. Apparently. Oh, and despite being the world's most wanted fugitive, he apparently has an active Twitter account with half a million followers. Frustratingly (but appropriately) the views for this article are a bit dodgy, since they all appear to be for his longer name, which is a redirect. Still, the mobile count is good and the topic is valid, so I can't really argue.
3	Suicide Squad (film)		1,608,426		See #1.
4	Pluto		1,491,263		Does it ever astonish you how often things work? We had one, just one, chance to get this right, and after 11 years in political limbo, three years in development, and nine years in space, everything hinged on a series of pre-programmed actions performed over the course of just 22 hours by a computer 4.7 billion miles away. During that time, the probe was radio silent; we had no idea if it had survived or not. If we hadn't received its bleep of hello then the entire mission would have been for nothing, and it is doubtful I or any of you would have seen the results in our lifetime. Think on that. And then remember that this event was out-viewed by an escaped drug lord and the trailer for a comic book movie.
5	Satoru Iwata		1,253,657		The famously ebullient CEO of Nintendo, who often incorporated bananas and caricature puppets into his presentations, winning him the admiration of gamers, died suddenly of cancer this week at the age of just 55. The first CEO of the company not related to the founding Yamauchi family in its 128-year history, he nonetheless strictly maintained its ethos that Nintendo products were for everyone, not just children or adults. In a moment that could have come from one of their games, a rainbow appeared over Nintendo's Kyoto HQ on the day of his death.
6	Novak Djokovic		857,933		The Wimbledon Men's (sorry, Gentlemen's) singles final wasn't held until the 12th, which meant that Best Tennis Player of All TimeTM Roger Federer got all the attention last week, before his final defeat at the hands of this Serbian wunderkind, who appropriately now gets his due. And he should; he won last year too.
7	Baahubali (film)		853,839		At $41 million, this sprawling, two-part historical epic is the most expensive film in Indian history (no, it isn't actually Bollywood, since it was made in South India, much to Bollywood's chagrin). Starring the Telugu actor Prabhas (pictured), the first part, subtitled "The Beginning", broke box office records upon its release on July 10, earning Rs 2.15 billion ($34 million) worldwide in just 5 days.
8	Ant-Man (film)		846,555		Personal editorial alert: As an avid fan of Spaced, Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, I was wary when writer/director Edgar Wright unceremoniously dumped the highest-profile project of his career because Marvel Studios refused to give him full creative control, particularly since Marvel kept this project alive for a decade mainly because he was interested in it. Afraid the damage caused by his departure would be irreparable, I began to speculate if there was a "Number 12 curse"; that no studio, no matter how beloved or respected, can go 12 movies without a critical bomb. Pixar's 12th was Cars 2; this was Marvel's. Well, they managed to avoid the critical mauling (the film's RT score is a decent 79%, though critics in my UK home have been crueller- no doubt in solidarity with Edgar), but the box office is somewhat iffy; while it opened at #1 (like every other Marvel Studios film to date), it had the lowest per-screen average of any film in the franchise. The film could still be buoyed by good word of mouth however.
9	New Horizons		839,290		The fastest spacecraft ever launched finally reached its destination after 9 years of traversing the interplanetary void. It may not be as cute as Sojourner but it is a stalwart little thing which, as several memes pointed out this week, cost less taxpayer money than several refurbished stadiums. And its mission isn't even over yet; the team hopes to redirect it to another Kuiper belt object before it leaves the Solar System's charted regions.
10	Roger Federer		791,565		The man widely regarded as the best tennis player of all time lost the Wimbledon title to Novak Djokovic in a titanic 7-6, 6-7, 6-4, 6-3 showdown.
11	Baahubali: The Beginning		768,571		See #7.
12	Bajrangi Bhaijaan		616,184		Hollywood has a good, old fashioned rule: when faced with an unstoppable juggernaut, don't fight- just duck and slip into your niche. It worked when Honey, I Shrunk The Kids opened the same weekend as Batman, and now it's worked for Bollywood: against the raging box office tsunami of Baahubali: The Beginning, it countered with a film specifically targeting Muslim viewers, starring Muslim superstar Salman Khan (pictured) and opening on Eid weekend. The film has so far managed to earn Rs 1 billion ($16 million) in its first three days.
13	Ida B. Wells		612,973		The slave-born suffragist, sociologist and civil rights campaigner who documented the real motives behind lynch mobs (surprise! They were more about eliminating black competitors than criminals) got a Google Doodle on her 153rd birthday on 16 July.
14	Caitlyn Jenner		599,590		On 15 July the former track and field star, honorary Kardashian, and recently transitioned woman received the Arthur Ashe Courage Award during ESPN's 2015 ESPY Awards. The award became controversial (beyond the usual) after a report alleged she had "bought" the award in exchange for PR plugs.
15	Harley Quinn		591,063		The mentally (and often physically) broken "girlfriend" of The Joker is arguably the most popular comics character never to receive the live-action movie treatment. Until next year, when she will be played by Margot Robbie in Suicide Squad.
16	2015 CONCACAF Gold Cup		578,955		The North American equivalent of the Copa America, the UEFA European Championship or the Africa Cup of Nations got underway in the United States on July 7.
17	Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice		569,925		DC's belated attempt to compete with Marvel's cinematic universe gets underway next year. Whether it will actually work is still up for debate.
18	Minions (film)		564,571		Those incomprehensible little yellow things from Despicable Me got their own movie. And it had the second-highest opening weekend gross of any animated film ever, behind the third Shrek movie. We truly live in an age of enlightenment. To be fair, no one remembers the third Shrek movie, and both movies did drop 60% in their second weekends. Meanwhile, Inside Out remains in the top 5 after a month in release so maybe I'm giving audiences too little credit.
19	Bahubali		558,188		The legendary founder of Jainism got an unexpected burst of popularity this week by virtue of (almost) sharing a name with the current blockbuster of the Indian summer.
20	UFC 189		557,751		The interim UFC Featherweight Championship bout between Chad Mendes and Conor McGregor was held on July 11 at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas.
21	Jurassic World		529,21		In this era of duelling gargantuas, when Hollywood risks $200 million budgets on a whim and triple-digit opening weekends are a seasonal event, the financial achievements of the first Jurassic Park can seem somewhat pallid. And yet, it was for a time the most successful film ever made, and more importantly, formed the prototype for the modern blockbuster; massive, frontloaded opening weekend, brushfire earnings and supercharged ancillaries. And now, after Furious 7 and Avengers: Age of Ultron made substantial dents in the US GDP, Jurassic World has arrived to show that its aging franchise is perfectly capable of holding its own in today's hostile environment. Its $208 million opening weekend was the biggest of all time, though at just $1 million above the previous record set by Marvel's The Avengers back in 2012, it wasn't exactly a killing blow. Still, it managed to claim the highest second weekend gross of all time as well, and is currently the fourth highest-grossing film of all time in the US. Today, the Jurassic franchise is just one monster among many, but it has shown that it still has the right to reign.
22	Deaths in 2015		527,250		The viewing figures for this article have been remarkably constant; fluctuating week to week between 450 and 550,000, apparently heedless of who actually died.
23	Iran		525,565		The ancient land of Zarathustra and Cyrus the Great hasn't had the best press recently, largely thanks to getting on America's bad side 35 years ago. But it has been gaining interest in the English-speaking world thanks to a very strict and rather chancy deal being struck to limit its nuclear weapons programme. Will this mean Iran finally comes in from the cold? Only time (and future US administrations) will tell.
24	Margot Robbie		509,011		The Wolf of Wall Street actress gets her big break next year when she plays Harley Quinn in Suicide Squad.
25	Enchantress (DC Comics)		494,877		The renegade magic user in the DC comics universe got a lot of attention once audiences got a chance to see her as played by model Cara Delavigne (pictured) in the trailer for Suicide Squad.

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 also exclude articles that have almost no mobile views (~2% or less) or almost all mobile views (~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.

Note: If you came here from the Signpost article, please take any discussion of exclusions to this article's talk page.