Set in medieval Thailand, back then known as Siam, Tien is the young heir to a noble family that witnesses how all of his household is massacred by the ambitious rival Lord Rajasena. Fleeing along through the Thai jungle, he is caught by slave hunters, but his willpower and spunk make them throw him to a crocodile pit.
At that moment, however, he is rescued in incredibly convenient fashion by the Pha Beek Khrut, the bandits of the Garuda Wing Cliff, a multi-national tribe of Asian martial artists. Having impressed their leader, Chernang, Tien is adopted by them and set to become a master warrior, which he will put to good use to try to extract vengeance from the evil Rajasena.
One of the most anticipated and ambitious Thai films in history, Ong Bak 2 might be considered the Asian version of Apocalypse Now, as its nightmarish production essentially stunted forever the rising career of Tony Jaa. The film's original idea had to be divided in a duology whose second part, Ong Bak 3, was released in 2010.
The film contain examples of the following tropes:
- All There in the Manual:
- The DVD's extras contain an excerpt by writer Ek Iemchuen where he reveals the reason why Tien's parents took him to learn dancing: apparently, they had a mystic prediction that Tien would suffer a terrible fate if he ever became a man at arms, which they tried to dispel by putting him to learn the least violent thing possible, in this case dances. However, because You Can't Fight Fate, his family would be killed and he found himself training to become a warrior anyway.
- The extras also reveals Master Bua is a Thai Brahmin, who knows about dancing, meditation and other arts.
- Ambiguous Ending: The final narration claims that Tien is going to be executed, but also that he might find a way to cheat death. We are then presented with a Flash Forward from Ong Bak 3, the scene where a post-recovery Tien stands in front of the Ong Bak after having defeated the soldiers that ravaged Kana Khone. For someone that has not watched the third film yet, this shot makes no clear sense.
- Ambiguous Situation: It's left ambiguous whether the masked assassins Tien faces at the climax are meant to be Pha Beek Khrut in disguise or unrelated hired guns. Their variety of Asian weapons and styles is matched only by the Khrut bandits themselves, not to mention Chernang's presence among them implies the rest are also his own men, but there is also Bhuti, an unrelated trump card never seen before, and Tien doesn't seem to react as if he had recognized any of them by their fighting styles (although he fails to recognize that of his own master until the latter is unmasked, so this might be a moot point).
- Animal-Themed Fighting Style:
- Tien defeats the kung fu fighter by using cobra-style kung fu.
- One of the assassins at the end uses tiger-style.
- The crow fighter at the end, Bhuti Sankha (whose name means "Demon Crow"), does the proper, using ample arm movements simulating wings and sporting long bird-like claws.
- Artistic License – Martial Arts: There's little excuse for an experienced warrior like Tien not to realize that his sword slashes are hitting a hidden armor instead of slicing Rajasena open. Only the resistance opposed against his blade would be starkly different compared to that of human flesh and bone.
- Beat Them at Their Own Game: This is Tien's final exam among the bandits. He has to defeat a Japanese samurai, a Chinese kung fu fighter and a tribal wrestler in their own fields.
- The Berserker: Tien's fighting style is frighteningly aggressive. He even scratches the face of an enemy after putting him a necklock.
- The Big Guy: The tribal wrestler seems to be this for Tien's team, being the biggest and strongest. He is the one who takes prisoner the slave ring leader, who is a giant in his own right.
- Big Ol' Eyebrows: The bandit who fights with karambits and does sleeve tricks has a massive unibrow.
- Boss Bonanza: Throughout the finale, Tien fights Chernang in disguise, the samurai with the straw basket, two dudes with twin swords, a fighter with a wicker shield, one with a lance, one with a heavy saber, a trio of fighters with katars, axes and tiger claws respectively, two unarmed fighters that do tiger kung fu and muay thai, one with a scythe, and two waves of multiple mooks in which he scores no less than 28 knockdowns the first and 17 the second (not counting Bhuti Sangkha, who knocks down Tien in turn). And then Rajasena's soldiers come out.
- Bulletproof Vest: Tien seemingly kills Rajasena by slashing him multiple times on the torso before throwing him off a building. Rajasena reappears later and smugly shows his armored vest to Tien.
- Bolivian Army Ending: The film ends with an unconscious Tien being surrounded by Rajasena's entire army.
- Chain Pain: One of the bandits fights with chained iron rings.
- Cool Mask: The samurai who seems to be in command of the assassin army wears a mask made out of a black wicker basket, like a Japanese komuso monk.
- The Chessmaster: Rajasena. The film takes place during the expansion of the Ayutthaya Kingdom, whose orders for Lord Sihadecho were to submit the conquered new territories. However, Sihadecho believes it was the main adviser, Lord Rajasena, who convinced the Ayutthaya king into starting those conquests, which would put Sihadecho in a position where Rajasena could easily destroy his household. He's right, and by the end of the movie, Rajasena has usurped Sihadecho's job, even establishing himself as a vassal king to Ayuttahaya.
- Contrived Coincidence: Rajasena sends Chernang to massacre Tien's family, only that Tien escapes thanks to a loyal vassal. Tien ends up in a slave circuit, where Chernang of all people finds and adopts him because he likes his spunk. Naturally, the thing becomes tragic when the truth is revealed.
- Diabolus ex Machina: A mysterious, anmalistic fighter appears at the climax and easily kick Tien's ass before stealing his elephant.
- Drunken Boxing: During the battle against the slave traders, Tien chugs a huge vessel of some presumably alcoholic beverage and switches to a weird, almost Capoeira-like fighting style, dropping to the ground and fighting almost exclusively with trips, sweeps and kicks.
- Downer Ending: Tien loses everything in his life again and is captured by his Arch-Enemy, it being presumed that he will be tortured to death. Also an Ambiguous Ending counting on Master Bua's final narration and the scene of a bearded Tien next to the Ong Bak Buddha.
- Everybody Was Kung-Fu Fighting: Roughly everybody in this film, with the exception of Bua and his villagers, is a martial artist or weaponmaster of some kind.
- The Foreign Subtitle: The Beginning in the English world. For its part, Spain added The Legend of the Elephant King.
- Genre Shift: The movie is a historical martial arts epic rather than a mere kung fu flick as the original Ong-Bak.
- Heroic RRoD: The marathon village fight takes its toll on Tien, and by the end, he can barely stand.
- Karmic Death:
- If accidentally, Tien slits the throat of his adopted father with his sword, who murdered his actual father by slitting his throat with a sword. He even acknowledges this fact before Tien kills him.
- As a boy, Tien was thrown into a crocodile pit by one of the guards. Years later, when Tien has the guard-turned-slaver at his mercy, he repeats the man's words from back then ("I will give you a chance") before ordering him thrown to the crocodiles.
- Kukris Are Kool: One of the guards in the slave market wields a kukri.
- Like a Son to Me: Chernang affectionately calls Tien "My son!"
- Meaningful Rename: Rajasena gives his own royal dynasty the name of Garuda. It's hardly a coincidence that Garuda is the mythological vehicle of Vishnu, the god of which the Ayutthaya king is considered an incarnation. By invoking this symbolism, Rajasena is simultaneously crowning himself over a mere general yet at the same time appointing himself as the perfect vassal to the king.
- Minor Major Character: Two of the assassins Tien faces at the end, the samurai with the straw basket and the crow warrior, seem to be pretty important characters on the basis that Tien fails to beat them, but we learn nothing about them.
- Mook Chivalry: Justified in the slave market brawl when it turns out everybody is positively terrified of fighting Tien after having seen what is he able of. Possibly too in the final mass fight.
- Multi-Melee Master: Tien masters a variety of weapons from different countries growing up and shows his skills with the sword (krabi, jian, talwar, katana, dao), spear, three-section staff and rope-dart.
- One-Man Army: To say the least, Tien is able to curbstomp an entire palace and then an entire village of mercenaries.
- Only a Flesh Wound: Tien is cut and slashed a lot in the closing, and yet is able to still dodge 99% of the attacks from his enemies.
- Redemption Equals Death: Tien's adopted father Chernang, who killed his real father, allows himself to be killed by Tien both to atone for killing his father and to ensure that the bandits are kept safe as promised by Rajasena.
- The Svengali: Chernang, who worked for Rajasena against Tien's family and now is trying to fulfill his part of the deal. In a subversion, he was seemingly unaware that Tien was his escaped target all along and only discovers it during the third act of the film, and when the moment comes, he allows Tien to kill him rather than the opposite.
- Throw Down the Bomblet: The scarred bandit uses bombs and hand grenades as his weapon of choice.
- Whole-Plot Reference: To Conan the Barbarian (1982), another film with a lot of sword slashes where a child gets his father killed in front of him, is captured by slavehunters, trains to become an excellent warrior, and ultimately seeks revenge against the powerful man that killed his father, not without paying the price of his impulsiveness and being captured.
- Wild Man: The woman in the cave is a feral martial artist who lures men in pretending to be a prisoner.
- Wizard Beard: Sengpa, Chernang's blind seer, has one, with matching hair.
- Wrestler in All of Us:
- Chernang's tribal wrestler uses a chokeslam on Tien when the latter's osoto gari fails. Tien retaliates with a DDT and later a headscissors takedown. He also uses elbow drops here and there.
- Bhuti uses a shooting star double foot stomp onto Tien (in an elephant!).
