Peter Weller said that RoboCop was one of the best films he ever made, but the other two he considered great were wildly different from Paul Verhoeven’s cyberpunk classic. RoboCop left an indelible mark on Peter Weller’s acting career. It was hugely popular – it’s still one of the best cyberpunk movies from the 1980s, and one of Paul Verhoeven’s best films – and it largely kick-started Weller’s career. Weller clearly understood how important and fantastic RoboCop was, as he returned for the sequel and even voiced the character again in the 2023 video game RoboCop: Rogue City.
Peter Weller even called RoboCop one of the greatest films he ever made, but he highlighted two other, more surprising, movies at the same time. He even went as far as to say that some of his earliest films were “real clinkers.” Weller has made plenty of great films over the years, from Star Trek: Into Darkness to his time voicing Bruce Wayne in Batman: The Dark Knight Returns. However, in the early 1990s, Weller only thought three of his movies could be considered great.
In 1992, Peter Weller Said RoboCop, Shoot The Moon, & Naked Lunch Were His Three Best Movies
Weller Said That He Only Thought Of Three Of His Films As Great At The Time
In an interview from 1992, Peter Weller explained that of the 22 movies he made up to that point, he only considered three of them to be great (via Times Colonist). RoboCop was among them, but the other two were quite surprising: 1982’s Shoot the Moon, in which Weller played Frank Henderson, and 1991’s Naked Lunch, in which he starred as Bill Lee.
“I’ve had 20-something movies. Some of them are good, some are mediocre, and a couple are real clinkers. The three that are great: ‘Shoot the Moon,’ the best ᴀssessment of the sadness of divorce in America; ‘RoboCop,’ and ‘Naked Lunch.’ That one was the most satisfying and challenging thing, stage or screen, that I have ever been involved with.”
Weller has made dozens more movies since 1992, and he likely considers a few of the newer ones to be “great,” but it’s still astonishing that RoboCop, Shoot the Moon, and Naked Lunch are the only ones he was truly proud of in 1992. It’s also worth noting that Weller thought David Cronenberg’s Naked Lunch was the best of the bunch, and that it was the reason RoboCop 3 had to cast Robert John Burke instead. Another interesting tidbit comes from Shoot the Moon: Weller only had a supporting role in that film, yet he ranked it above films he starred in, like 1988’s Shakedown.
RoboCop, Shoot The Moon, & Naked Lunch Highlight Peter Weller’s Range
Nobody But Peter Weller Could Make Such Wildly Different Movies & Consider Them All Highlights Of His Career
The fact that Peter Weller only considered three of his pre-1992 movies great is a surprise in and of itself, but his actual picks were also very shocking. RoboCop, Shoot the Moon, and Naked Lunch are all good films, but they’re also wildly different. RoboCop is a gory, brutal, and ultimately pretty silly cyberpunk action movie. Naked Lunch is a surreal adaptation of a book that was a symbol of the counter-culture in the 1950s. Shoot the Moon is a somber and often depressing look at the causes and effects of divorce on a family.
About the only thing that ties RoboCop, Naked Lunch, and Shoot the Moon together, aside from being Peter Weller’s favorites, is how much of his range as an actor they display. In RoboCop, Weller plays a police officer turned into a robot who grapples with his own humanity and the decaying corporatism of America. In Shoot the Moon, he plays a woman’s new boyfriend during and after a particularly messy and grim divorce. In Naked Lunch, he plays a man heavily influenced by psychedelic drugs who goes on a surreal covert mission at the behest of anthropomorphic insects.
Weller’s favorite movies that he acted in couldn’t be more different, and he couldn’t have played more different characters in them. Anyone who can go from starring in a campy, action-packed thriller like RoboCop directly to an exceptionally weird and anti-authoritarian film like Naked Lunch has tremendous range. More than that, however, Weller’s favorite movies highlight just how varied his artistic tastes are. He may be best known for RoboCop, but Peter Weller has had such a long and storied film career specifically because he can see art in a wide range of movies.
