After Ripleys testimony and before they even go out, Burke has probably figured out what's going on. And we later find out he is indeed responsible for what happens to the colonists. He definitely has his ulterior orders/plans already. And it isn't until Ripley pieces everything together and tries to expose him that he turns against her.
So why would he need Ripley to come? Why would he even want her there?
Probably to kill her. As the only living witness to what the xenomorph could do, she could prove a problem.
shareBut he wouldn't need to kill her if she didn't go is the OPs point.
shareMaybe years later a scandal may break out about horrific bio weapon the company has developed that breaks all arms conventions , or gets loose and causes thousands of accidentil deaths (like on lv42 but back home)
Ripley would be like "Yeah that wasnt an accident or anything , I know where they got it , I told em to nuke the place , theyse guilty"
... so she was a loose end to be tied up
She still possessed worthwhile knowledge on the creatures.
You've also got to remember that Burke massively underestimated them. He assumed the marines would be able to deal with them.
She did have a lot of knowledge about the alien. But too bad that the Marines placed more faith in their weapons than in Ripley's firsthand knowledge.
I also think Burke figured that Ripley would be his ally in bringing back some live aliens. He wrongly assumed that she would be happy to assist him in smuggling back the eggs and "we will be set for life". She had lost her license and he figured that she would be happy to make money off the aliens.
I also think Burke figured that Ripley would be his ally in bringing back some live aliens. He wrongly assumed that she would be happy to assist him in smuggling back the eggs and "we will be set for life". She had lost her license and he figured that she would be happy to make money off the aliens.
Hard to say. There's a lot of company politics that the movies don't really tell us about directly, just hints at. We only get to see the repercussions.
Burke could have been ordered to try and get Ripley on board by a higher up, for all we know.
Horrible writing. One of the most obvious "twist" villains of all time and they forgot to give him a decent motive.
shareI considered it a hole in the plot and even added it to IMDB's goof section once upon a time, but it makes no sense that Ripley finds his communication later and that he's surprised by it. If Burke was indeed interested in covering his tracks, destroying all evidence of his communication with the colony would have been the first thing he'd have done when the marines got there. You mean he really just "forgot" about all those orders and communiques and that they may have kept records? Seriously? In real life, a bureaucrat who got a lot of people killed and was interested in covering it up would have that as his number 1 priority.
Also as Gorman said to Ripley, the entire basis of their mission was that they had "lost contact with LV-426". That would mean they'd be more focused on figuring out what happened to the base's communication system in order to find out why that had happened. Instead, the marines becomes oddly obsessed with tracking down the colonists once they find the place empty and nobody even thinks to look for the communication center and see what went wrong with it. Had they done that, it would have been very obvious that the communication with Burke had initiated the whole disaster as the Aliens were destructive by not interested in destroying records, as Ripley proves later when she confronts Burke with the giant wad of paperwork.