Solarbabies (1986)

Costume Design by Bob Ringwood

While heavily inspired by Mad Max, Bob Ringwood's costumes for Solarbabies were of a more futuristic flair. The titular 'Solarbabies' sports team of the title wear a set of futuristic padded sports armor covered in blue, red and pink spraypaint in different patterns.

Their enemies the Scorpions wear more intimidating, gunmetal-coloured armor with masked helmets.

The Mad Max influence is seen clearly with the denizens of Tyretown, clad in the usual tattered leathers. Tyretown's guards are interesting in that they feel like a precedent for Ringwood's cut-up tire armor designs for Demolition Man a few years later, as they sport armor that is similarly made up of torn up rubber tyres!

One aspect that aged badly is the Native American tribe all played by white actors. The tribe's outfits seem to be made up of cut-up patterned fabrics arranged into either very revealing tops, such as the fit sported by Ivor (Terence Mann), or cloaks.

By contrast the 'Eco Warriors', another group of wasteland nomads, wear costumes inspired by Bedouin garb, though with baggy sleeves, deep collars and patterned lining and large panels over the waist.

The Eco Warrior costumes feel a bit similar in design to the Fremen outfits Ringwood had designed for David Lynch's Dune a few years earlier

More outfight 'futuristic' are the uniforms worn by the prison orphanage's staff, such as a briefly seen teacher wearing a prim beige dress. The orphanage's guards wear odd looking jumpsuits with lighter yellow mesh patches, worn with caps.

A futuristic suit was made for Sarah Douglas as the scientist Shandray. This also feels similar to one of Ringwood's Dune designs, namely the dress made for Lady Jessica.

The uniforms of the 'E-Police' wear predominatly blue leather, with the commander Grock (Richard Jordan) wearing a blue leather uniform with ribbed panelling over the shoulders and cuffs.

The soldiers under him wear motorcycle outfits that have been altered with extra panelling, though I don't know if the leather pants and jackets were off the rack or custom-made. You can see the greeblies stuck on what are obviously bought motorbike helmets!

Demolition Man (1993)

Costume Design by Bob Ringwood

The supposed Utopia 'San Angeles' is protected by a police force sporting fascistic and slightly camp uniforms. These uniforms have slight futuristic touches like mandarin collars and a little fax machine on the belt instead of a weapon.

Bob Ringwood wasn't too impressed with the final result as he felt they chose actors who looked too tough and made the uniforms less an ironic contrast. The police chief's uniform also looks militaristic, with his tunics mandarin collar fitted with patches resembling German officer collar tabs.

San Angeles is ruled by Dr. Cocteau (Nigel Hawthorne) who wears many kimono-like garments with raised collars similar to Edwardian men's suits. The intention according to Ringwood was how, according to the script, people would cover themselves from the sun.

Another reason according to Ringwood was to imply that Asian countries now had more cultural dominance, and historical Asian fashions now were more widespread. India is another one of the nations mentioned as having became more powerful, which is seen especially with how Cocteau's white outfit is worn with a Gandhi cap, possibly as a way of trying to show himself as a man of peace.

His associate, who is aptly named Associate Bob (Glenn Shadix) wears a patterned peach kimono, with a similr belt as to his superior.

The various other citizens of San Angeles also sport fashions that seem to be a mix of Japanese and Indian traditional garments, with some high fashion influences.

The staff of the cryoprison wear smocks that also seem to be in a slightly kimono-like design, made of a shiny blue-green material as well, with ribbed strips down the sleeves and collars.

Even Stallone is made to wear similar garments for when he has dinner at Taco Bell (or, Pizza Hut, if its the European cut), sporting this wide-shoulded shirt made of a patterned dark grey material.

The aforementioned Taco Bell/Pizza Hut dinner scene also has us see the most standout dress of the film; a jewelled short dress worn by Huxley (Sandra Bullock) which is also briefly worn with a grey jacket covered in greyish imitation fur.

Other dresses in this scene include the one worn by Bob's partner, which is black with cream and white lining over the chest, and Cocteau's associate wearing a shiny metallic vest over her grey dress.

The staff at Taco Bell wear dresses and suits, the dresses having a floral material over the back and shoulders, the suits having it over the sleeves with similarly coloured sashes over the waist.

Ringwood opted for a different approach entirely when designing the uniforms of the 'Scraps', the underground dwellers opposed to San Angeles' reign, and who Wesley Snipes' villain Simon Pheonix must inftrate

The Scraps had a look Ringwood described as 'Mad Max but not punky'. Phoenix's Scrap armor in fact seems to be constructed out of what seems to be cut up tyres, arranged to have a raised collar. Edgar Friendly, the leader of the Scraps, wears a makeshift armored jumpsuit, itself worn under a grubby overcoat.

A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001)

Costume Design by Bob Ringwood

Spielberg's foray in the 'machine gets self-aware' subgenre is by and large a plainclothes affair, which was sadly quite against Ringwood's wishes - his own idea according to the 'Dressing A.I.' featurette was to make it more 'fashionable and catwalky' but Spielberg pushed back, not wishing for it to 'date' or whatever. According to the same interview, Ringwood said he tried out outfits on the character of Monica (Ashley Scott), which I assume include this rather nice patterned shirt. I assume the same applied to the rest of the cast and extras, meaning that Ringwood's design talents were mostly relegated to Jude Law in his turn as the 'Gigolo Joe' prostitute android, who wears a shiny black coat made of fishing line woven as satin that looked like 'liquid metal', to make the character look like a 'romantic hero'. He actually has two shirts (made of a synthetic material), one in white, the other in a shiny purple.

Also very briefly seen is the 'Gigolo Jane' counterpart, who wears a shiny purple catsuit with lining over the chest - this is only seen in the film for maybe less than ten seconds.

The only other notable costumes in the film are seen in the 'Flesh Fair' segment, with the first being the 'Biker Hounds' motorcyclist outfits that are fitted with demonic looking helmets and lights - though infuriatingly hard to make out thanks to being shot at night! It seems only the helmets and armor was made, with the rest of the costume presumably being off-the-rack motorbike jumpsuits.

The Flesh Fair segment also has a cameo from the band Ministry, whose lead singer wears this chrome skeleton outfit that again, is barely seen on-screen, as is the outfit worn by the announcer - judging by this music video (that is in absolutely horrendous picture quality), the announcers outfit was made of a reflective material that would allow parts of it to 'glow' in the studio lights!

Star Trek: Nemesis (2002)

Costume Design by:

- Bob Ringwood ( notable efforts: Excalibur (1981), Dune (1984), Solarbabies (1986), Batman (1989), Batman Returns (1992), Demolition Man (1993), The Shadow (1994), Batman Forever (1995), A. I. Artificial Intelligence (2001) )

- Robert Blackman ( notable efforts: The Running Man (1987), Star Trek: The Next Generation (Seasons 3 to 7), Deep Space Nine (1993 - 1999), Voyager (1995 - 2001), Enterprise (2001 - 2005), Pushing Daisies (2007 - 2009), Mockingbird Lane (2012) )

The last of the movies based on Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Nemesis was an especially dour and miserable effort, trying to emulate the 'dark' style of action horror films that the early 2000s were flooded with - this attempt to stay relevant failed hard, with Nemesis killing off Star Trek films until the generic dull reboot films. The costume design for this final cinematic outing of the 90s Enterprise crew was done by the esteemed Bob Ringwood in one of his last few gigs before his retirement. Almost all the guests at the wedding are just in reused costumes from episodes of the various 90s Star Trek series, with one of the exceptions being the pink dress worn by Troi, which is a relatively simple design, with flowers on one side of the shoulders, as well as more on one side of the waist.

Another one of the few exceptions is the golden hat and dress worn by Guinan (Whoopi Goldberg) in the characters last appearance on-screen - Guinan's dress has the typical asymmetry that was typical to her dresses designed by Durinda Wood and Robert Blackman in all previous appearance,s but this time it is worn with a golden-coloured gown cut with hole-patterns on each side. In a way, this design was a bit 'going full circle' for Ringwood, as one of his first costume design efforts - David Lynch's Dune - would have had similar hats worn by the villagers on Arrakis.

Another Starfleet uniform is briefly glimpsed, this being another Robert Blackman design as per the contracts to always design any Starfleet uniforms in the movies, regardless of who else was designing for the rest of the cast - these tunics are similar in design to the dress uniforms seen in Insurrection, but are grey with white lining.

This film involves the Romulans again, who this time are in their most conservative fashion seen - as the photo below shows, for the Romulan senators Ringwood crossed over Japanese and ancient Roman fashions, with all the senators having a mosaic-like pattern on their collars, the chief senator distinguished by the star-like pattern on his own silken robes. The guards of the senate are never seen on-screen apart from just in the distance, but the website photo below shows that they were in bulky padded armor, slightly resembling Ringwood's designs for the armor uniforms seen in Solarbabies and Alien 3.

The military of Romulus are also in markedly different uniforms than their previous appearances, wearing rather snappy tunics covering in a colourful mosaic-like pattern, with a metallic brooch worn with the black shirt, and with a belt over the tunic - this is a marked contrast to the large-shouldered outfits they wore in their television appearances! These uniforms would later be reused in episodes of Star Trek: Enterprise that involved the Romulans.

The rather dire villain of this film is the slave turned warlord Shinzon (Tom Hardy), who is clad in a design that was playing up to Ringwood's favorite design elements - a shiny black jumpsuit with slick shiny black padding on the arms, legs and torso sides, with an ornate shoulder armor, and fitting with a cape. In interviews with 'Star Trek Communictor', Ringwood said he went to insects for inspiration for the uniform of Shinzon and his minions, hence the iridescent sheen, with Ringwood saying he also used inspiration from 19th-century uniforms for the more ornate parts (the collar is a dead giveaway of that particular inspiration). The suit was put on auction by Christie's.

Apparently a cut scene would have had Shinzon wearing a workout costume consisting of a bottle-green jumpsuit worn with a vest with iridescent panelling over the back - slightly similar in design to jumpsuits that Ringwood had designed for the scifi horror oddity Supernova a few years earlier.

Shinzon is the leader of the vampire-like Remans, the sister species of the Romulans, whose soldiers are all clad in similar outfits to Shinzon - the otherwise unnamed 'Viceroy' (Ron Perlman) wears an outfit that is almost identical barring the chest armor (which has less pronounced pointed shoulders and different carvings over it, as well as an buckle-like marking on the waist.

The various Reman soldiers are in similar uniforms to the Viceroy's, except they do not have capes and the chest carvings are slightly different, with some Reman crewman just having shiny black pointed shoulder pieces instead of any armor. Just like the Romulan uniforms, the Reman uniforms were also reused in episodes of Star Trek: Enterprise.