10 Sequels That Were Nothing Like The First Movie

The Original:

Star Trek: The Motion Picture boldly went... pretty much where everyone expected it to, picking up where the original series had left off a decade earlier by sending Captain Kirk and his crew on his mission to stop a deadly intergalactic threat.

The Sequel:

The second and third installments largely followed the tried-and-tested narrative path on which Star Trek made its name, albeit to the tune of diminishing box office returns. Sensing something fresh was needed, director and co-writer Leonard Nimoy fashioned a sequel that was completely bonkers, even by Trek standards.

Time-traveling back to Earth by slingshotting around the sun in order to round up a couple of humpback whales to answer an alien distress call (no, seriously), The Voyage Home moves firmly into fish-out-of-water comedy territory as the team gets up to all sorts of shenanigans in 1986 San Francisco.

Tongue-in-cheek without descending into full-blown parody, Star Trek IV's premise had the potential to sink the franchise entirely given how wildly different it was to the previous entries, but the end product is still regarded as a fan-favorite to this day.