Yahoo News 'Jackass Forever' trailer: The guys 'mature,' but PETA blasts film's 'cruel' animal stunts
"Concussions aren’t great," O.G. Jackass stuntman Steve-O puts oh-so-mildly in the first trailer for Jackass Forever, the MTV favorite-turned-film series' fifth big-screen offering. "But as long as you have them before you're 50, it's cool. And [Johnny Knoxville's] 49."
"A lot of people ask, ‘What will Jackass be like once we’re older?'" stunt performer Chris Pontius says. "Well, it'll get more mature."
That’s right: The Jackass crew is turning old, and they know it.
They also look it. Knoxville, the franchise’s most famous face, has even noticeably entered the "silver fox" phase of his showbiz career since the last time we saw him.
But from the first looks of Forever, their first cinematic entry since 2013's Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa, the treacherous, ridiculous, oftentimes hilariously pain-inducing stunts are not showing any signs of mellowing with age.
Knoxville himself gets shot out of a rocket (wearing angel wings, natch) and flipped over by a raging bull, failed-matador style. There’s an exploding toilet. There are electric shocks, softball pitches to the crotch, tarantulas and snakes. There are cameos from Knoxville's Bad Grandpa, Eric Andre (who recently collaborated with Jackass co-creator and longtime producer Jeff Tremaine on last year’s Bad Trip), rappers Tyler the Creator and Machine Gun Kelly, and a bear left alone with a man strapped into a chair and covered with honey and salmon.
The animal rights watchdog group PETA, however, is not happy with the trailer's content.
"Jackass stunts are violent and vulgar, but if the talent is willing and the wounds are self-inflicted, that’s one thing — however, it’s quite another when animals are exploited, harassed, and harmed: That’s cruelty," PETA President Ingrid Newkirk said in a statement released to Yahoo Entertainment.
"The Jackass Forever trailer shows Knoxville’s crew provoking a snake and a bull to the point of attack, treating a tarantula like a game piece, and coercing a chained bear to eat honey off a bound participant. Four months before its release, Jackass Forever has already risked normalizing animal exploitation and legitimizing the cruel exhibitors who pimp out animals for productions. PETA is urging producers to remove stunts involving animals from the film."
There was no immediate response from the film crew or its studio, Paramount.
Jackass Forever opens Oct. 22.
Original story updated with PETA response
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