Paul Reiser Discusses His Cut Death Scene From Aliens

Actor Paul Reiser has made a return to the Alien franchise – just not in the way that most people expected! 

Reiser and his son Leon teamed with Adam F. Goldberg (The Goldbergs), Brian Volk-Weiss (The Toys That Made Us) and Hans Rodionoff (Marvel’s Damage Control) to write a five-issue Aliens limited series, in the vein of Marvel’s “What If…?” stories. Entitled “What If… Carter Burke Had Lived?” the story imagines a version of James Cameron’s Aliens in which Weyland-Yutani Corporation Jr. Executive Carter Burker (Reiser) survived the Xenomorph invasion of LV-426 and the fall of the Hadley’s Hope colony.

While Aliens: What If…? allows Paul Reiser to imagine what could’ve been with his character in the Alien Universe, the actor confessed that he actually did once perform a very definitive end for his character. In the final cuts of James Cameron’s Aliens, Burke betrays the Colonial Marines and Ellen Ripley, as they are making a dire last stand against the Xenomorphs in the operations center. Burke escaped out of a side door, which he promptly sealed behind him, leaving Ripley, the marines, and the young surviving colonist Newt to die. As Karma would have it, Burke discovered that he had sealed himself in a room with a Xenomorph, which immediately jumped him. 

Did Carter Burke Die In Aliens?

There has always been a debate among Aliens fans about whether or not Burke truly bought the farm. Cameron’s film establishes that the Xenomorphs and their queen are intelligent enough to strategize and take prisoners, to use as breeding fodder for the Facegrabbers to produce more Xenomorphs. While some of the marines died in battle against the dreaded aliens, the majority of the humans the Xenomorphs got their hands on ended up prisoners under the planet’s nuclear reactor. Naturally, Burke being a non-combatant means that he’d likely be taken rather than killed, as the scene implies – leading to many fan theories that he’s still out there. 

However, Paul Reiser reminds fans that he indeed filmed a deleted scene for Cameron that sealed Burke’s fate – one you can still probably find in the depths of the Internet. That scene took place in the climax of Aliens, when Ripley infiltrates the Xenomorph nest under the reactor to rescue Newt. In the deleted scene, she finds Burke cocooned in the hive, moments away from a Xenomorph bursting out of his chest. With little time or care, Ripley gives Burke the means to take himself out, and keeps on moving. 

“We don’t shoot a scene knowing it’s going to cut, so he ‘died,’” Reiser said in an interview for Aliens: What If…?. “But then when Cameron didn’t include the scene, I went, well, maybe I didn’t die. And because the fact of that world is Xenomorphs don’t kill you, they just cocoon so they can replicate inside you – which by the way, you’ll probably die from – but that’s not the goal. So Ripley was chasing Newt to go and… She’s still alive. They don’t kill you, they just cocoon you. So if the kid could be alive, it’s very plausible that Burke could be alive.”

It was that kind of ambiguity within the fandom that made Reiser keen on taking on a project like Aliens: What If…?:

The what if of this whole universe is really quite plausible,” Reiser concluded, “It’s not that far a stretch. Well, he could have, and the timing works out. They figured out the timing. In the movie it’s 17 minutes from here to there [the reactor to the drop ship Ripley escapes on]. And that would’ve been enough time.” 

• Aliens: What If #1
• Written by Hans Rodionoff, featuring art by Guiu Vilanova (Cosmic Ghost Rider) and covers by Phil Noto (X-Men, Star Wars: The High Republic).
  
• WHAT IF…CARTER BURKE HAD LIVED?
   For years, fans of James Cameron’s legendary Aliens questioned whether Carter Burke, a company man more hateable than the Xenos themselves, had actually survived the traumatic events on the terraforming colony Hadley’s Hope. Now the actor behind the beloved villain, Paul Reiser, joins his son Leon and the star-studded team of writers and producers Adam F. Goldberg, Brian Volk-Weiss and Hans Rodionoff for a journey back to Hadley’s Hope and the twisted escape of a man who should have died.
• Rated T+
• In Shops: Mar 06, 2024
• SRP: $4.99

Marvel’s Aliens: What If…? releases on March 6th, 2024.