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Fans rejoice over the ‘Star Wars’ musical team-up with ‘Hamilton’ using #Force4Ham

Twitter has its eyes on you.

 

Aja Romano

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Posted on Dec 1, 2015   Updated on May 27, 2021, 2:00 pm CDT

Members of both Hamilton and Star Wars fandoms spent this morning erupting over the news that composer Lin-Manuel Miranda had joined forces with J.J. Abrams to write cantina music for The Force Awakens.

Pairing Miranda, a MacArthur fellow and Pulitzer nominee, with an intergalactic space rebellion might not seem like a natural fit, but as the inevitable resulting hashtag #Force4Ham is currently proving, Star Wars and Hamilton, a hip-hop musical about the founding fathers, actually work perfectly together:

https://twitter.com/ryanlindberg/status/671706147842301953

And when you think about it, it’s easy to see why. Both stories are narratives of plucky outsiders with hidden talents and lowly beginnings joining a haphazard, struggling group of rebels fighting for independence. Sure, one of these fights happened in America in 1776 and the other one happened a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away—but beneath the surface, Star Wars and Hamilton are practically soulmates.

https://twitter.com/goyal_abhi/status/671704656842739712

https://twitter.com/SusLikesTurtles/status/671710604449742848

There’s the fighting:

https://twitter.com/goyal_abhi/status/671705472957882370

The politics:

https://twitter.com/peters0n/status/671730352155721728

The love stories:

And, of course, there are all the character parallels—and all the drama that goes with them:

There are moments when the meme gets meta—and even better:

https://twitter.com/SusLikesTurtles/status/671689142397476864

But as brilliant as all this is, #Force4Ham is even better when it goes in the other direction:

https://vine.co/v/iWAe2bu371q

Though the “X4Ham” meme might be new to Star Wars fans, the Hamilton fandom has made a habit of applying Hamilton lyrics to the rest of the world since last month’s popular trend #ParksandHam, quickly followed by #Cap4Ham, because why not pair Hamilton with the Avengers?

But #Force4Ham is already bigger than either of them—proving just how much energy there is in each fandom at what might be their peak moments. After all:

Photo via shedboy/Flickr (CC BY 2.0); Rusty Clark/Flickr (CC BY 2.0); Remix by Aja Romano

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*First Published: Dec 1, 2015, 3:30 pm CST