Wealth & Money Quote by Aaron McGruder

McGruder’s line skewers a particularly American daydream: that cultural hype is just a doorway to private profit. The offhand “You know” is doing work here, staging the remark as common sense, a weary observation from someone who’s watched the same hustle repeat every June. “Every time” turns it into ritual, not a one-off mistake. Summer movie season isn’t just entertainment; it’s a predictable economic weather pattern, where audiences and would-be side hustlers alike mistake attention for guaranteed money.

The key sting is in “people think.” McGruder doesn’t accuse them of greed so much as of a kind of mass credulity, the belief that proximity to a blockbuster (selling bootleg tees, flipping collectibles, chasing licensing fantasies) can shortcut the usual realities of labor, access, and capital. “Gonna get rich” is purposely blunt, almost childish. That tonal choice makes the fantasy sound like what it is: a cartoon version of capitalism, where the market rewards whoever shows up earliest with a box of knockoff action figures.

Context matters: McGruder came up as a satirist of consumer culture and political spectacle, especially the way corporate narratives and mass media manufacture desire. Here he’s pointing at merchandising not as a side effect but as the movie’s shadow economy, the real franchise engine. The joke is that everyone knows it’s cynical, yet everyone lines up to participate anyway, hoping cynicism will pay.