Top 25 Report: Most Popular Wikipedia Articles of the Week (May 17 to 23, 2015)

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Summary: As usual for the time of year, pop culture rules this week. The start of summer vacation in the US means a focus on summer movies, particularly blockbuster sequels Avengers: Age of Ultron, Pitch Perfect 2 and Mad Max: Fury Road, though the meaning of the term "summer movie" has become increasingly vague as blockbusters open earlier and earlier. Pop cultural competitions Payback 2015 and, of course, the Eurovision Song Contest had a similar impact, as did summer TV shows Game of Thrones and The Flash. The real world did intrude into the summer reverie in markedly disturbing ways, from the murder of rapper Chinx, the death of tragic rape victim Aruna Shanbaug and the seemingly endless conflict with ISIL.

As prepared by Serendipodous, for the week of May 17 to 23, 2015, the 25 most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the report of the most viewed pages, were:

Rank	Article	Class	Views	Notes
1	Mad Max: Fury Road		1,515,128	Numbers are up 35% for this action film starring Tom Hardy in the title role, which debuted on Australia on May 14 and in the United States the next day. Despite topping this list, and receiving rapturous reviews (it currently stands at 98% at Rotten Tomatoes), it has not managed to claim the top spot at the box office, being hobbled by Pitch Perfect 2 and then Tomorrowland. But while box office is a big mover of Wikipedia views, controversy is the Bagger 288, and when a mildly antediluvian men's rights activist from the modestly named website returnofkings.com declared that no one should see "Mad Max: Feminist Road", the media smelled some blood and went into a predictable spin. While he admits he hasn't actually, well, seen the film, the guy's gripes are apparently that Max doesn't speak in the trailers, while Charlize Theron does (remind me, how many lines did Max have in The Road Warrior?) and that Theron "Barks orders at Mad Max. Nobody barks orders at Mad Max". I guess he must have missed Tina Turner's immortal line in Beyond Thunderdome, "You can shovel ****, can't you?". Anyway, the only apparent result of this "controversy" is that more women have gone to see the film, which should give it the legs to recover its $150 million budget.
2	David Letterman		879,202	The American talk show host finally retired this week after 33 years on late night television, first on NBC's Late Night with David Letterman and then CBS's The Late Show with David Letterman. In the decades following his defeat in the brief war of succession for the throne of Johnny Carson, Letterman may not have achieved the ratings of the eventual victor, his onetime friend Jay Leno, but was always seen by opinion makers as the true heir to Carson's legacy, not least by Carson himself. While Leno contented himself with puerile caricatures and flat one-liners, Letterman was prickly, genuine, and fiercely topical, often barely concealing disdain for guests he didn't like. His humour bordered on the surreal; sometimes he would blow up cabs or drop televisions out of windows for no reason, while another time he turned two local souvenir shop owners named Mujibur and Sirajul into overnight celebrities just, well, because. With Leno and Letterman passing into the night, the battle has passed to the next generation, with each handing their respective chairs to Jimmy Fallon and Stephen Colbert.
3	Mad Max		815,965	The 1979 film starring Mel Gibson that started the absurdly influential Mad Max franchise, now resurrected after three decades in hibernation.
4	Eurovision Song Contest 2015		752,700	Numbers have almost doubled for this year's event, probably due to its being the diamond jubilee of this most peculiar of international competitions. Politics threatened to rear its ugly head again after it seemed likely that Russia would win the popular vote, and thus the dubious privilege of hosting next year. The prospect of one of the most gay-friendly events in the world being held in a country with stringent anti-gay laws was ultimately undone by eventual winner, Sweden.
5	Avengers: Age of Ultron		717,191	The latest instalment in the Marvel Cinematic Universe crossed the banner $1 billion worldwide mark this week.
6	Game of Thrones (season 5)		703,082	Numbers are up this week, which isn't surprising, since the latest episode, "Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken" featured certified sadist Ramsay Bolton raping virginal Sansa Stark to the rage of a number of viewers, particularly the feminist blog "The Mary Sue", who stated they would no longer review the show.
7	The Flash (2014 TV series)		656,073	This spinoff from the hit series Arrow marks DC Comics' second attempt to create a TV universe, after the late and much lamented DC Animated Universe. Numbers are up this week for the season finale, which aired on May 19.
8	Stephen Curry		636,375	On May 22, during a Western Conference Finals game against the Houston Rockets, the basketball player for the Golden State Warriors broke the record for the most three-point shots in a playoffs, in just 13 games.
9	Payback (2015)	Future	632,394	WWE's latest pay-per-view pantomime was held on May 17 at the Royal Farms Arena in Baltimore, Maryland.
10	Pitch Perfect 2		620,095	This American musical comedy film, and sequel to 2012's Pitch Perfect which generated the improbable hit song "Cups", debuted in North America May 15. Starring Anna Kendrick (pictured), it has grossed $187 million worldwide as of May 27 on a budget of just $29 million, only a fifth that of Mad Max: Fury Road. Interestingly, while that film has suddenly become lauded for its feminism, this one, which is geared specifically towards women and has consistently beat it at the box office so far, has been criticised for fat jokes, racial stereotypes and other easy, regressive forms of humour.
11	Bessie Smith		615,496	The "Empress of the Blues", one of the most successful blues singers of the 1920s and 1930s, who died in a car accident at just 43, got a long-overdue biopic on HBO on May 16, starring Queen Latifah in the title role, which premièred to good reviews.
12	Memorial Day		584,948	The last Monday in May (that's May 25 this year), the day that the United States chose to honour its war dead, is perhaps better known as the traditional beginning of US summer vacation, and is thus eagerly anticipated by millions of people too young to serve but old enough to stand in line for action movies.
13	19 Kids and Counting		542,715	The TLC reality show, which concerns the lives of a Christian family with 19 children, shot into public awareness when it was taken off air after it was revealed that one of the children, Josh Duggar, had a history of child molestation.
14	Game of Thrones		534,425	See #6
15	Aruna Shanbaug case		516,557	This frankly horrific case, in which a Mumbai nurse, after being brought to the point of death during a sexual assault, spent over 40 years in a persistent vegetative state, came to notice upon her death this week, having never recovered from her condition. To protect her modesty, the hospital hid the fact that she had been sexually assaulted, and thus the perpetrator only served 14 years in jail. In 2010, she became the subject of an assisted suicide case that went to the Indian Supreme Court, but was ultimately rejected.
16	Chris Kyle		511,580	The titular American Sniper is back on the list after a near-three month hiatus, arguably due to his widow Tanya Kyle's tour to promote her autobiography, American Wife.
17	Deaths in 2015		503,976	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.
18	List of Game of Thrones episodes		434,687	See #6.
19	Facebook		430,765	A perennially popular article.
20	A History of Violence		423,630	As noted in a Reddit thread this week, Viggo Mortensen (pictured) considers this David Cronenberg film to be one of the best, if not the best, he's ever made; a bold statement from the guy who was the titular King in The Return of the King. Still, critics largely agree with him. After the three LotR movies, (and his début film, Witness, which doesn't really count as a "Viggo Moretensen movie") it's his second most popular film on Rotten Tomatoes, basically tying with its spiritual sequel, Eastern Promises.
21	Chinx		412,617	The New York rapper was shot dead in Queens, New York on 17 May in a drive-by shooting incident.
22	Rebel Wilson		410,172	The Pitch Perfect 2 star got into the news this week after an alleged former classmate declared that she wasn't actually a 29-year-old named Rebel Wilson but a 36-year-old named Melanie Bownds. According to Wikipedia, this is largely true (she's actually 35) though of questionable relevance.
23	Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant		393,012	ISIL are back on the list after their shock conquest of Ramadi, and the commencement of a full-on assault on Anbar province, as well as their taking of the ancient city of Palmyra, which gives them control over most of Syria.
24	Conchita Wurst		387,950	Last year's Eurovision winner opened the ceremony this year, and remains a huge star in his/her home nation.
25	Taylor Swift		379,153	Swift's music video for "Bad Blood" premiered on May 17, at the start of the Billboard Music Awards, and broke Vevo's 24-hour viewing record by accumulating 20.1 million views in its first day of release.

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.