The US and China, the world’s largest superpowers and film box offices, are commonly believed to opposingly value individualism and collectivism, respectively. Drawing upon Schwartz theory of basic values, this project explores the value motivations in recent Chinese and American popular films, performing a content analysis of the 50 most domestically successful films from each country between 2010 to 2019. The study reveals that American films have been adopting more collectivist values while, in contrast, Chinese films tend to increasingly prefer individualist values. Additionally, in terms of film mode, action films tend to embed more collectivism than non-action films.