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Wikipedia:Top 25 Report/October 17 to 23, 2021

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The Top 25 Report


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Prepared with commentary by Benmite, TheJoebro64, Igordebraga

⭠ Last week's report

It feels like it was just a couple weeks ago that we here at the Report were thrilled about how few articles related to celebrity deaths there were on the Report, and that's because it was. Unfortunately, we can't have nice things for very long, as illustrated by how much of this week's Report is shaped up by new entries on the death list that hardly leaves (#7), with most of the shows and movies on the list also coincidentally focused on death. Just in time for spooky season, I guess.

At the very top of the list is finally something other than that one show (whose pageviews are slowly but surely dying) where hundreds of people die playing kids' games (#2). The death of the first African-American secretary of state and one of the architects of the Iraq War, in which tons of soldiers and innocent civilians died, shot him right to number one on the Report. Elsewhere, a prop gun shot this widely-unknown cinematographer (#17) onto the Report and also in the chest, killing her after it was fired by a widely-known actor (#4). Her death was widely compared to the accidental shooting of a kind-of-widely-known-in-the-'90s actor (#5) and son of an entirely-known martial artist (#16), who died young as well.

We've also got the third season of a show about a budding serial killer (#6, #8, #20), the twelfth installment of a film series about a seasoned serial killer (#9), the twenty-fifth installment of a man with a license to kill (#12, #24) - whose villain (#25) brought life back to a comedy series... and in a sketch plays a serial killer! - plus a movie about an assassination (#14), superheroes who seemingly cannot die (#22), and how the Kanye we once knew has been put to pasture (#23). Don't fear the reaper, folks! At least there are non-morbid subjects in the North American release of Dune (#3, #10, #21), wrestling and cricket in Arabia (#11, #13, #15), and two musicians (#18, #19).

Rank Article Class Views Image Notes/about
1 Colin Powell   2,232,933   Powell, the first African-American secretary of state, died on October 18 due to complications from COVID-19. Powell had quite the career: he was a four-star general and served as the United States National Security Advisor under Ronald Reagan and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Bush the Elder before becoming Secretary of State under Bush the Younger, in addition to formulating the Powell Doctrine. However, his legacy is clouded by his involvement in the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the resulting Iraq War.
2 Squid Game   2,218,010   The fact that a page having around two million pageviews for the week is an indication that it's "losing steam" is pretty astounding, but then again, so is the show that earned those views. We've seen this South Korean smash hit, about a bunch of people who risk their lives playing children's games, at the top of the Report for the past four weeks, so forgive us if we don't care to go into any more detail than necessary about it. There may be a spike in views by the time Halloween rolls around, as we're sure to see an endless number of Squid Game costumes of varying quality and taste levels.
3 Dune (2021 film)   2,049,552   The second film adaptation of Frank Herbert's classic 1965 novel (#10) was released internationally a month ago, but opened in the United States on October 21. And unlike David Lynch's oft-maligned 1984 version, Denis Villeneuve's new interpretation (intended to be the first of a two-part adaptation) is getting great reviews and is poised to make some money.
4 Alec Baldwin   1,333,697   Tempting as it may be to crack jokes about Jack Donaghy going through the five stages of grief, this whole situation might be a bit too tragic to be glib about. This week, while on set in New Mexico for the upcoming Western film Rust, Baldwin discharged a prop gun (which, according to court documents, he was told was safe before using) that turned out to be a bit less prop-y and a bit more shoot-y than expected. He shot two people: Joel Souza, the film's director, and Halyna Hutchins (#17), a cinematographer whose injuries were fatal.
5 Brandon Lee   1,034,719   The Rust shooting that takes up a good chunk of this Report has sparked numerous comparisons to the untimely death of Bruce Lee's son, who famously lost his life in 1993 to an almost identical prop-gun-firing incident on the set of The Crow. The similarities were evident enough to prompt a response from Lee's relatives on his Twitter page, but the circumstances are obviously at least a little different: Lee's role in The Crow was set to make him an international star, while Hutchins's work was always behind the camera.
6 You (season 3)   941,823   Me?

This Lifetime-turned-Netflix series about a stalker and serial killer named Joe Goldberg, played by Gossip Girl's gossip guy Penn Badgley, entered its third season last week. It focuses on the relationship between him and Love (played by #20), the object of his affection from season two to whom he gets married after learning that she's just as psycho as him. It's received mostly positive reviews and enough attention to finally knock that goddamned game which I won't mention again out of Netflix's coveted number one spot.

7 Deaths in 2021   873,574   Since sadly there's reminiscences of #5's death, let's quote from The Crow soundtrack:
7 You (TV series)   869,661   On a personal note, I never bothered making it past season one after having to deal with a cast of unbelievably unrootable-for characters, including the main love interest/victim, Beck, whose entire role can be summed up in this video.
9 Halloween Kills   852,001   Serial killer Michael Myers (or "The Shape", in case you thought we were talking about the guy who voiced Shrek) returns to menace Laurie Strode in the 12th film of the Halloween series and the sequel to the 2018 soft reboot. Like its predecessor, the David Gordon Green-helmed slasher features Nick Castle and Jamie Lee Curtis reprising their roles from John Carpenter's legendary first Halloween from 1978.

While the film is doing decent business at the box office—especially for an R-rated movie in the middle of a damn pandemic—reviews aren't as strong as they were in 2018, with critics finding it messy and not as fresh as its predecessor.

10 Dune (novel)   808,546   The source material for #3, a philosophically challenging journey written by Frank Herbert about Paul Atreides and his home planet of Arrakis, where a life-extending drug and interplanetary travel fuel source known as melange (or "Spice") is harvested, also happens to be the best-selling sci-fi novel of all time. A number of sequels were written and, as mentioned above, it's also received some other critically-panned adaptations over the years.
11 Crown Jewel (2021)   754,344   WWE returned to Saudi Arabia after the cancellation of last year's events for... you know.
12 No Time to Die   737,295   MGM refused to let the 25th James Bond movie go to streaming unless someone paid $600 million for it. No Time to Die has already broken $460 million in theaters worldwide, and maybe when Daniel Craig's departure as 007 (and do they make sure it's a departure!) hits China by the end of the month, it can reach that asking price. (in the meantime, Craig had a surprise appearance on the Saturday Night Live episode hosted by #25, who plays the movie's villain)
13 2021 ICC Men's T20 World Cup   720,705   And back to sports in Arabia, namely a cricket tournament that the UAE and Oman took on as India had to be separated from their national pastime due to the pandemic (and even then, Oman nearly lost its stadium when Cyclone Shaheen hit a few weeks ago).
14 Udham Singh   699,900   The subject of the biographical film Sardar Udham, released at the tail end of last week and starring Vicky Kaushal as Singh, was an Indian revolutionary known for his 1919 assassination of Michael O'Dwyer, the Lieutenant Governor of Punjab, and for his subsequent hanging for his crimes in 1940. If Singh sounds like your average Lee Harvey Oswald, it might be useful to mention that O'Dwyer was also responsible for the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, in which hundreds of peaceful pro-Indian independence protesters were surrounded and slaughtered. So there's that.
15 ICC Men's T20 World Cup   673,690   After the current edition (#13), the tournament as a whole, which like just about all sports events had the edition planned for last year delayed to this one.
16 Bruce Lee   662,316   The iconic martial artist and father of #5 died in 1973 at age 32, making it for only four more years than his son.
17 Halyna Hutchins   630,935   This Ukrainian-American cinematographer worked on films such as Archenemy and Darlin', and was the sole casualty of the Rust shooting.
18 Adele   608,156   The reigning queen of blue-eyed soul may have released her first single in almost five years last week, and her album may not be out for another four weeks, but did anyone really expect for Adele's world domination to be over with that quickly? After Adele released yet another critically acclaimed ballad in the form of "Easy on Me", the song broke streaming records and topped almost all of the charts that it appeared on this week. Meanwhile, her fourth studio album, 30, about her divorce and motherhood, is set to be released in less than a month and will also likely cause the world to stop.
19 Travis Barker   589,191   The Kardashian clan (not Klan) brought this Blink-182 drummer into the fold with his recent engagement to Kourtney Kardashian, and this time around, it feels a bit less like Get Out than usual.
20 Victoria Pedretti   573,254   This scream queen and star of #6/8 plays Love, the (ahem) love interest of Joe Goldberg who's recently given birth to their newborn son. Love also happens to be a serial killer too! Her and Joe are a match made in heaven. (Possibly. In fact, I'd never even heard of this show until I started contributing to this report.)
21 Timothée Chalamet   560,200   Chalamet has starring roles in two films opening this weekend: one is #3 on this list, as #10's protagonist Paul Atreides, and the other is Wes Anderson's "love letter to journalists" The French Dispatch. The rising star has one more film on his agenda this year, the Adam McKay-directed black comedy Don't Look Up. He also recently shared a photograph of himself in-costume on the set of Wonka, in which he plays Willy Wonka himself. As The Guardian wisely wrote, "there are essentially two ways to react to it. The first is to be disgusted that Hollywood has bastardised one of the all-time great children's characters... The second is just to get really, really horny."
22 Eternals (film)   560,163   For all the ruckus caused by the trailer for The Batman, the film's article couldn't get into the list (#27, beaten by both this whole list and the return of Succession), and yet we still have the next installment of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which chronicles the exploits of a race of immortal humanoid aliens created by Jack Kirby. Eternals premiered in Los Angeles on October 18, and early reactions to Nomadland writer/director Chloé Zhao's foray into the world of superhero cinema (Martin Scorsese would be fuming if he saw those two words together) have largely been positive. And if advance ticket sales are anything to go by, the film is poised to make a splash at the box office when it's released next month.
23 Kanye West   493,062   Speaking of yet another transplant Kardashian...

In what will undoubtedly amount to little more than another one of his many, many attention-grabbing schemes and a whole lot of talk page bickering, West legally changed his name to just "Ye" this week, sans the Kan- or any middle or last name. Fans have questioned what the purpose of the change was and why he would change the name given to him by his late mother, whom he named his last album after. Knowing Kanye, it's probably that he wants his name to sound like everyone is just cheering "Yay!" for him all the time.

24 List of James Bond films   488,089   Even if I didn't quote a Bond theme this week for (oh, the irony) #7, one more because this entry might not return in a while:
25 Rami Malek   470,146   Malek, an actor known mostly for his stone-faced portrayal of Mr. Robot protagonist Elliot Anderson, his stone-faced portrayal of No Time to Die (#12) antagonist Jim Baxter, and his mustachio-faced portrayal of Bohemian Rhapsody Queentagonist Freddie Mercury, hosted Saturday Night Live for the first time this week, where he showed off some impressive comedic chops in what many critics considered one of the first consistently high-quality episodes for the long-running sketch series in a long time.

In his opening monologue, Malek talked about how he's always being pegged as a dramatic actor, but the truth is, he's been serving up laughs for a while now. He had a supporting role in the oft-forgotten sitcom The War at Home, appeared in the box office bomb Dolittle, and was kind of also in the rom-com Larry Crowne, a movie I didn't even know existed. I can't imagine how anyone could forget that he does comedy.


 
Most Popular Wikipedia Articles of the Week (October 17 to 23, 2021)

Exclusions

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  • 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.
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