Trivia / Ong Bak 3

• Missing Trailer Scene: The trailer includes an additional scene of Tien's re-training in the temple, where he unveils a scroll and sees in it the drawing of a Buddhist deity featuring the ajna or third eye.
• Refitted for Sequel:
  • The whole battle in the village, when the Ong Bak statue gets scratched, was already shot back when Ong Bak 2 and 3 were meant to be a single film (its last seconds of footage, showing the bearded Tien and the scratch, were still used as the ambiguous epilogue of the final Ong Bak 2). You can note how in this film, Tien keeps clean shaven during his first bout of training and his romantic interlude, yet randomly grows a beard during the second bout before the battle. Chances are that his rehabilitation and training were originally a single sequence, with the beard marking the time passing by, and that they did the mentioned oddity in order not to have Tien shaggy while romancing Pim in-between.
  • It's likely the dance scene between Tien and Pim was originally shot in 2 and meant to be the film's conclusion, as closer inspection shows they are dancing in a village, not the remote forest where she visits him in 3 (and where the film still cuts to when Mhen is shown imitating them).
• Star-Derailing Role:
  • When Ong-Bak 3 was released and all was said and done, Jaa's reputation as a filmmaker was mauled due to his role in this and the previous film's Troubled Production, pretty much stopping his momentum as a star and ending forever the whole "next Bruce Lee" moniker he had been given. Jaa himself was so tired of the experience that he took a break from film altogether, instead returning to the Buddhist temple where he trained in his childhood and spending almost a year there as a monk. He returned to the business three years later, though only to undertake a couple of similarly failed projects and eventually initiate a new career of secondary roles and cameos.
  • Dan Chupong came to this movie riding the hype of two first films, Born to Fight and Dynamite Warrior, but his role as Bhuti confirmed the beliefs of some people that he had been greatly overestimated as a martial arts star, as his acumen here was considered rather mediocre (though, ironically, critics believed his acting as the villain was pretty sound). With the duology's failure to equate the success of the original, Chupong's status as a rising star fell flat and never recovered. His only notable work since was Vengeance of an Assassin in 2014, a flick that was more notorious for being Panna Rittikrai's final film before his death.
• Troubled Production: The making of the film, which had been given a raison d'être thanks to the Bhuti subplot, was much faster than Ong Bak 2 because they still had all the sets and contracts, but it was not devoid of problems either. All of the previous mess had caused a negative reaction among distribution companies, and Jaa and Chupong suffered a string of accidents while performing the stunts.
• What Could Have Been:
  • After the release of 3, producer Somsak Techaratanaprasert announced a possible Ong-Bak 4, hopefully with Jaa's idol Jackie Chan in the cast, but it never realized, among other things because Jaa had taken a break from acting to become a monk. Rumors of the film still being in the works, either with or without Chan, used to surface every few years.
  • Around the same time, Raymond Wong and Ringo Lam announced their intention to make a film uniting Jaa and Donnie Yen, as the latter was a big Ong-Bak fan and had wanted to work with Jaa for a long time. Again, Jaa's Buddhist retirement impeded it.
• You Look Familiar: Dan Chupong, who plays Bhuti, can be spotted playing a bodyguard of the Big Bad in the original Ong-Bak. Unlike the case of Tien and presumably Mhen, this is likely not meant to be a reincarnation or something.