Trivia / Ong Bak 2

• Cast the Expert: The bandit expert in sleeve tricks is played by Philip, a real life Thai magician.
• Creator Breakdown: Tony Jaa, who was writing and directing a film for the first time, suffered a nervous breakdown due to the project's sheer magnitude and disappeared from production for two months. Some believed he went to meditate in Thai jungle caves, others claimed he traveled to Cambodia, and some others outright feared he had committed suicide, but in any case he was impossible to locate and caused a lot of trouble for it. Even when Jaa returned, not exactly in a better state of mind, he had to step down from the director's chair and give it to his mentor Panna Rittikrai, as he could just not do it anymore. It is said the reason why Jaa became temporarily a Buddhist monk after the release of Ong Bak 3 was to recover his mental health (although more cynical voices say he did it in order to dodge the legal consequences of his behavior during production).
• Deleted Scenes:
  • Some scenes shot in the Preah Vihear Temple in Cambodia had to be left out of the original cut, due to the increasing political tensions between Cambodia and Thailand for the temple.
  • The DVD's extras reveal there were scenes of Master Bua teaching the young Tien to dance. This is left offscreen in the final film.
• Dyeing for Your Art: Jaa underwent a tremendous training to get the film done, from learning many Asian martial arts and weapons to improving his acting and direction skills under renowned teacher Orchuma Yuthawong. He also trained a lot of khon dance under choreagrapher Pichet Klunchun to nail the technically demanding performance of his character, and also invented a whole new art, natayuth (Thai for "dance-fight"), by mixing muay thai and khon dance, though this would have to be showcased in the next film.
• Fake Nationality: Some characters would be technically Cambodian, given the historical setting, but are played by Thai actors. This was acknowledged by the production team.
• Franchise Killer: The film, Tony Jaa's directorial debut and his biggest budget film to date, only avoided being the last film of the franchise because it had to be split in two in order to be saved. Its amazingly Troubled Production and Creator Breakdown effectively killed Jaa's reputation among filmmakers and made the studio lose literally millions. Due to this, when Ong Bak 3 came in, it became an even worst Box Office Bomb and marked the beginning of a career slump for Jaa.
• Hostility on the Set: There was apparently some arguments between Rittikrai and Jaa, which had to be mended before they could resume. At least part of the heat started when Rittikrai chided Jaa for leaving the project and going missing. There was also some friction with Prachya Pinkaew, who had apparently predicted that Ong Bak 2 would be too much of a project for Jaa's directorial debut, and had been (unsuccessfully) trying to convince him to leave the chair to someone with more experience.
• Missing Trailer Scene:
  • The first trailer shown in Cannes showcased three spectacular scenes with a white-clad Tien that clearly hailed from film's original third act, where Tien came for the next round after having been crippled and then developed natayuth in the jungle. The scenes feature Tien back-kicking a royal guard from an elephant in a forest, kicking a guard while hanging off an elephant's tusk in a cloistered courtyard before landing in a stance, and leaping from an elephant and kneeing a guard throwing a spear from his own elephant. None of them was used when the third act was erased and expanded into Ong Bak 3, likely because they couldn't be reconciled with the new storyline (they show what was probably the assault on Rajasena's original palace, which was distinct from the one created for 3).
  • Later trailers contain an additional flashback scene where the young Tien is spying on someone, before someone's hand (likely young Pim's judging by the size) pulls him back.
• Playing Against Type: Akaradeth Rodwinit, a popular Thai comedian famous for being 2.13 meters tall, whose previous roles were either in comedy films or portraying goofy monsters, plays here the solemn, spiritual Blind Seer Sengpa.
• Reality Subtext: The film ends with a voiceover similar from the scene of the third film where Master Bua asks the villagers to join in prayer to purge Tien's bad karma and wake him up. One can feel this applies to the whole production, which only the effort of many producers and directors managed to get done.
• Stunt Casting: The bandit of the hand grenades is played by Surachai Jantimathawn, the singer of the Thai folk rock band Caravan.
• Troubled Production:
  • The movie turned out to be an overambitious project for the unexperienced Jaa. The production, already an expensive and very artsy enterprise, became more and more bloated over time while the script grew from a simple period flick to a bloated, hours-long epic, so the movie fell behind schedule and went overbudget up to almost thrice the original 100 million baht (with additional claims that Sahamongkol Film also failed to pay in time and Jaa went broke keeping things running from his own pocket). Tony became so overwhelmed by all the pressure that, according to rumors, he started engaging in problematically long meditation routines, dressing like a shaman and sacrificing a live chicken at the start of each shooting day for luck (Thai black magic, it seems). Eventually, when the stress reached its peak and there were not enough chickens in the world to palliate it, Jaa snapped and basically ran away from production.
  • Trying to gain time, the team appointed Prachya Pinkaew as a provisional director and called Panna Rittikrai to convince his former trainee to return. However, Jaa was impossible to locate even for Rittikrai, and this caused a mess panic among the producers, who were already sick and tired of negotiating with Jaa and now wondered why had things stopped. Eventually, Jaa reappeared alive and well after almost two months, but then he did a number accusing Sahamongkol of denying him the promised budget and demanded to be released from his ten year exclusive contract with them, and ended up grabbing his lawyer and seeking refuge in a Royal Thai Police station, claiming that he had spotted a cadre of suspicious safari-clad thugs following him with nefarious purposes. Adding to the mess, Jaa's parents claimed that a South Korean mafia was blackmailing their son, and there were soon wild rumors that the Chinese Triads were also on it. It took some more time and legal threats, as well as the mediation of general police deputy Jongrak Chuthanond, for Jaa to drop his demands and return to the sets.
  • Production was on track again, but the delays had caused Sahamongkol Film to lose another ton of money, so their execs got fed and withdrew their fundings. A lot of additional negotiations between Jaa and Somsak Techaratanaprasert (Sahamongkol's chairman) had to happen in order for them to continue funding the project, and one of the new measures was giving the director chair to Rittikrai, who had worked as a writer for the first film and had much more experience behind the cameras. Dan Chupong was brought in too, rumoredly because he was a rising star at the time and the higher-ups wanted to send Jaa the message that they had a replacement for him in future productions if he kept being a pain in the arse. By this point, they had been forced to push back the release date once, but fortunately the shooting of the film itself was 70-80% completed, so Techaratanaprasert proposed Rittikrai to divide the story into a two-part film, compose the first part, and release it already to buy time.
  • Even at this point, the film needed big last push, as the story they had written to divide the film required entirely new sets, namely the large Khmer-style palace arena built by Rajasena to crown himself, which was crafted by expert Ek Iemcheun (also a script consultant for the new story) and was horrendously expensive. Only after spending 25 million baht at this they could wrap the damn film. Ong Bak 2 finally saw light in its second date, December 2008.
• What Could Have Been:
  • The movie's original plot, according to the synopsis given in the 2007 Cannes Film Festival before Jaa's ruckus, was going to be substantially different from what we got when it was forcefully expanded and divided into two films. The story was the same only up to the point where Tien inherited the leadership of the bandits, after which he found out that Rajasena was holding a competition to find the best fighters to hire. Seeking a chance to kill the villain and avenge his parents, Tien infiltrated the competition and won, becoming Rajasena's second knight, only for him to be betrayed by Chernang in their village as in the final film. The third act saw the crippled Jaa being healed and achieving natayuth, returning to find the village ravaged by the soldiers (the battle was seen in the epilogue in 2 and reused intact in Ong Bak 3), and raiding Rajasena's palace for the final fight (scenes of which can be seen in the first trailer).
  • The film's production and Jaa's erratic behavior costed him a simultaneous role in another Thai period film, Naresuan 3, where he played a slave named Kham and got to shoot some footage in chains. He was replaced by Dan Chupong, which ironically went to be added to Ong Bak 2. There was also another project by Peter Chan set in Thailand in which Jaa was involved back when it looked like Ong Bak 2 would be a quick affair.
  • Kessarin Ektawatkul, the female Taekwondo star featured along with Chupong in his previous movie Born to Fight, was rumoredly considered to be added to Ong Bak 2 and 3 along with him.
  • Bhuti Sangkha's initial appearance was very different from the final product, having a regular face, a topknot and a black attire without sandals or his signature hood. The film's second poster (the one with Tony Jaa about to knee Dan Chupong in the face) still shows him this way, and the DVD extras reveal there were promos with Chupong in character wearing this original clothing.