Still waiting for the plot

Was there a plot to this movie? I'm not really sure...

I also don't understand why everyone is hating on the actors for what was simply a poorly written and directed movie. Tony Jaa can't control that...

Perhaps what I saw simply had badly translated subtitles and I missed out on a LOT of key information, but it sure seemed like the plot was painful. They also seemed to disregard common sense and practicality for over the top scenes. The bike chase scene? Really? We get it, big epic groups of people vs one guy are winners, but when it makes no sense and there is basically no reason for this to happen it is just stupid. And the fire scene? Come on, does anyone on that set have any idea how fire actually works? The train track scene...painful. Stop writing in things you think will look cool if they are totally impractical! I realise martial arts movies will favour impressive sequences over realism, but this took it too far.

The characters were very one dimensional, at least given that this is a sequel we already have knowledge of the two main heroes but the rest are just left up to you to imagine what their back story must be. There was zero motivation for anything that was going on (aside from the need to get the elephant back), it was all just happening and you were forced to accept that this is how it was.

I think the big unanswered question that I had for 90% of the movie was "why?"
So much of what happened suffered from the "hey this sounds like a good idea, lets write these scenes and then later we can think of a way to link them together" strategy. There was no flow, I felt like I was watching a "best of the protector 2" montage, where they cut out the story and just showed the action scenes.

The bad use of CG and other key issues have already been touched on elsewhere, but for me the plot - or lack thereof - was the major disappointment for this film.