KONG: SKULL ISLAND First Trailer: Stomp On This

The first trailer for Kong: Skull Island has stomped online and it does a good job of establishing a foreboding mood that is strikingly different from its predecessors.

This is a teaser -- more than likely, future trailers will come along that show us much more than needed -- but it sets up faces that are familiar, people like Tom Hiddleston, Brie Larson, John Goodman, Samuel L. Jackson and others, and plops them onto an island where we know King Kong rules.

Will this movie itself dispense with dispatch the seemingly obligatory 'this is why we're chasing a giant beast' first act that marked King Kong (1993, 1976 and 2005)? We shall see. The new version is set in the 1970s. Larson is a war photographer and other characters evidently have military experience. And if you notice a definite Apocalypse Now vibe to the helicopters, I'm sure that's not accidental.

Director Jordan Vogt-Roberts made the indie The Kings of Summer a few years ago, a coming of age tale that was fairly tasty, so no idea if he can pull this movie off when it opens in theaters next year -- March 10, 2017 is the due date -- but this is a very promising advance look. How does it strike you?