I though it was a bit strange since the Knights of Ren (apart from Kylo that is) from the trailer doesn’t seem to have lightsabers.
They may have all had lightsabers at one point during development
Could that shot go with the space shots of the red light on a planet? Perhaps this is all part of firing the Starkiller?
That was more or less what I assumed, but isn’t Starkiller base the winter-planet iself? If so it can’t exactly shoot itself, so maybe there’s two snow-planets; one with the forest that we see Finn and Kylo duel on and the more barren one that we’ve seen actually split open to reveal the super-weapon. Either that, or this is a shot of the planet blowing up at the end of the film and the Falcon escaping the explosion (like in ROTJ).
My thought is that firing the weapon for the first time clears a significant chunk of the land with the first blast. Like if someone had built a forest inside the Death Star’s “dish” and it all got fried the first time they turned the thing on.
That’s possible, but then the Falcon would have to have landed somewhere on the dish. There might be a scene during the part (which we’ve seen in the trailer) where the planet starts opening up where they (Finn, Han, Chewie) realize that they have essentially landed the Falcon on the Starkiller’s canon and have to get away before they get blown up.
As for the Knights of Ren, I’m looking forward to seeing those specialized weapons in action. That guy in the background has a sword that looks like something out of an anime, and the guy on the left looks like he has some sort of mechanical arm weapon.