Sylvester Stallone's Chaos pen trailer: the most bizarre film he's ever made | Sylvester Stallone

Sylvester Stallone's Chaos pen trailer: the most bizarre film he's ever made

The promo film for Stallone’s majestically ugly pen has resurfaced on social media, revealing such eternal truths as ‘death does not exist without life’

By 2013, Sylvester Stallone was out of the late-career Hollywood doldrums. He had resurrected his two most famous characters, Rocky and Rambo, to much acclaim. He had created a hit franchise with The Expendables. And he was about to start talks with Ryan Coogler to make Creed, which went on to net him an Oscar nomination.

But still Stallone wanted more. The clarion call was sounding, and he could ignore it no longer. It was time to accept his destiny. It was time for him to design a fountain pen.

This is why, in 2013, Sylvester Stallone teamed up with the 106-year-old Italian luxury brand Montegrappa to create the Montegrappa Chaos Limited Edition. But a pen like this, inspired by 16th-century artists such as Battista Franco and Sebald Beham, couldn’t simply just be put on sale. No, a pen like this needed a trailer. The trailer, which has just resurfaced on social media, it is easily the most ostentatious project Sylvester Stallone has been involved with. It deserves to be deconstructed.

The trailer begins with some simple narration from Stallone, who meditates on the paradoxes of existence. “To have light, there must first be darkness,” he intones. “Death does not exist without life. To have peace, war is required. He doesn’t say, “To have normal pens, you must also have legitimately batshit pens,” but this sentiment is heavily implied.

He continues: “To keep order, first there must be CHAOS.” Because Chaos is the name of the pen. Because everyone wants a pen called Chaos, don’t they? Nobody wants a pen called Sensible or Reliable or Doesn’t Spunk Ink Everywhere. No, they want Chaos, and Chaos is what Sylvester Stallone has designed. Just how chaotic is it? Glad you asked.

The trailer begins proper. We meet a skeleton, decaying by the banks of the river. Who does the skeleton belong to? The guy who commissioned the pen? We may never know, because it starts to shimmer and glow before us.

And now it transforms into a mighty monolith. You guessed it, the monolith is the pen. The pen has a skull on it. CHAOS.

Wait, but that’s not it. A snake emerges from the river and crawls up the pen. Because it is a pen that apparently also has a snake on it. CHAOS.

And a pirate’s sword, too, lazily flung at it from god knows where. But it’s OK. Everything initially comes from constituent parts, so I’m sure they’ll eventually blend together to form something tasteful and …

Nope. For some reason, the pen is even more bizarrely gaudy in the flesh than everything that came before it would suggest. It looks like something you’d buy from a French market stall on a school holiday. It looks like a moron’s belt buckle. It is by far the ugliest thing I have ever seen, and I once saw Sylvester Stallone’s Get Carter remake.

It’s worth pointing out that this trailer is almost four minutes long, and this screenshot is only 98 seconds in. The rest of it is all just whooshy CGI closeups that looked as if they’re from the mid-90s, accompanied by the first words anyone could think of. Here, as you can see, it says “EXOTIC”. The next two are “MAJESTIC” and “IMPOSING”.

Also there is quality and beauty in every detail. One such detail, for example, is a fist. This pen has got a little metal fist on it, along with all the other tat that makes it look about as comfortable to hold as a knotty poo. Sylvester Stallone made this.

I’ll save the big end reveal as a surprise for you, because I’m still reeling from it. Instead, I’ll end here, at 2 min, 17 sec, where the pen trailer promises to give you “The Power of the Written Word in Your Hands”, which is a description of every pen that has ever been made. Still, the Montegrappa Chaos Limited Edition Fountain Pen in gold is yours for a mere £40,500. Or, if you’re some sort of cheapskate, the silver one is £3,555.

• Sylvester Stallone
• Stationery
• Luxury goods sector
• Michael B Jordan

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