Seems to indicate some 'world-building' in evidence. I'm guessing Korea has been unified by the South in this future. The North Korean flag is different.
It's difficult to say whether those other two figures are a result of artistic choice or deliberately being stylised that way. It could be that they're absent of much detail just because they're meant to be random. On the other hand, they do have a slightly Engineer-esque appearance to them - although, too short to literally be interpreted as them.
Perhaps they're vat-created 'super-soldiers'? Maybe that's what Ripley is viewing - the creation of one? Perhaps they're using some of the black ooze found on the/a derelict craft in a refined form, to enhance human genetics? That could account for humanoid figures with Engineer-like facial similarities - assuming that's even what's meant to be represented on there. As I say, it could just be that they're meant to be unimportant background characters. Can't help but noticed they seem to have completely black eyes, like Engineers do, however.
Or perhaps they're cloning Engineers, themselves, taken from DNA of the original Space Jockey? Slightly modifying them on a genetic level, so that they're not as physically imposing. Would actually be a nice throw-back to '
Alien Resurrection' if they're doing it to gain access to memories stored on a genetic level!
It's a concept which has been done before. There's the great TV show, '
Space: Above And Beyond', which dealt with soldiers who had been grown in vats for a previous war, years before, with genetic modifications. There is, of course, '
Soldier'. But more relevantly, those of us who remember the '
Book Two' graphic novel, which predates those scripts, will remember that General Spears had that same concept as a part of his history: He was artificially grown and genetically enhanced to be trained, from birth, as a radically advanced soldier for the military of that time.
In regards to the Korean flag, I just remembered that the game, '
XCOM: Enemy Unknown', had soldiers wearing armour with a very small patch on the upper torso to represent the nationality of where that
specific individual member of the team. It could be that the Colonial Marines or a futuristic UN-like multi-national force is intervening and that this is just the uniform's way of indicating where he hails from.
Quote from: SpreadEagleBeagle on Jul 16, 2015, 08:26:22 PM
Looks like he is going for an aged Ripley and Hicks, and the power armor that supposedly Korean marine is wearing suggest that the movie still take place in an alternate future and timeline than the original one, i.e. Blomkamp is still touting the idea and concept of retconning A3 and A:R... Lame.
Ripley/Hicks, we've talked about non-retcon possibilities for before. The new armour's existence doesn't retcon anything, though.