The Asteroid Field is a musical piece composed by John Williams for Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back. It can be compared to its movie as Ben Kenobi's Death/Tie Fighter Attack can be compared to Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope: it achieved a minor popularity to music enthusiasts as a track.

AnatomyEdit

It opens with a portion of The Imperial March. There's subtle brass with woodwinds for the melody in two distinctive segments from 0:50 through 2:15. Big brass catches the ear of the listener from 2:17 through 2:41, then reprising an earlier segment, before a crescendo to an altered segment of the preceding brass, and then goes off to a segment from Han Solo and the Princess. The piece ends with a quiet, eerie segment, before using woodwinds as a finale.

AppearancesEdit

John Williams originally composed the piece for The Empire Strikes Back, during the first asteroid field scene. A few sources, however, like to use the segment played from 2:17 through 2:41 to represent the Millennium Falcon, as if that was the vessel's main theme. This was the case in a documentary by the Hasbro Toy Company regarding their action figure scale Millennium Falcon, when it showed various scenes involving the starship.

The theme is played prominently during the Star Tours attraction when the passengers' StarSpeeder 3000 has a dangerous encounter with a large group of comets.

In many Star Wars Video Games it is used in Asteroid FIeld levels such as in Star Wars: Starfighter, Star Wars Battlefront and its sequel Star Wars Battlefront II

Its one of the Chapters on the Musical Journey DVD as an "Escape Theme".

In the 1992 SNES game Super Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back the theme is used during the start-up screen and Asteroid level.