Men's Liberation

I could joke about the fact that there's essentially no interaction between female actresses in the LOTR trilogy, or social media's crazy love towards this series, but this is honestly a great example of positive male bonding and friendship, acknowledging and working through one's flaws, and achieving an goal despite overwhelming odds.

There are some great meta-analysis of LOTR and the positive masculinity it portrays.

This one is my favorite https://youtu.be/GruFzUsKddI?si=yDZL5QJQ1oJ-jOtf

Aside from that it's a wonderful trilogy all round. It's a great story of good vs evil, brotherhood, loyalty and friendship.

I have never thought about the Lord of the Rings in that light before. Thank you for this.

I was going to add Good Will Hunting. It strangely fills the op's request for non-traditional male character growth well.

And since we are on a Robin Williams kick, I would also add "What Dreams May Come". Strong Robin William performance that focuses on character development, and what it means to have integrity and determination as a man and

Sokka also has very good character growth in terms of healthy and positive male traits. He starts out as a bit abrasive and sexist. The opening scene of episode 1 is actually just Katara going off on him about sexism. The scene is kind of abrasive but again, the character grows really well as the series progresses. And I think Sokka is important too. Showing that male characters CAN change and CAN become better people.

Plus, the show does have another case of character growth, with one of the most compelling in all media when it comes to Zuko. And towards the end of the show, he's also showcasing a lot of positive traits. The duality with his sister is also important. Because this is one of the only shows that has the female counterpart as more violent/"evil" than a male character. Usually the female character is always the gentle, kind, loving one that tempers the male one. But they flipped that on its head. No, girls can be abusive too.

From the world of animation princess mononoke and for a very direct approach Vinland saga ( you have to be ok with ultra violence, but in this case it's a clever device to lure in a specific target audience that actually needs to hear the message).

Uncle Iroh may be my favorite character ever. Across all media. There's an impossible amount to love about his story and arc

For purely positive masculinity, Avatar is good. It was great for it's time, but I think there are some bits and pieces that haven't aged the best. Most of the female characters end up being damousels in distress. The most prominent, Katara, is primarily a maternal figure who mostly adheres to traditional heteronormative gender roles. Toph was originally written as a joke, according to interviews with the writers. It's hard to say for sure how much was on the writers vs the execs at Nickelodeon. For the time, it was still fairly progressive.

Korra is a worse show for a variety of reasons, but this is one of the places where I think it's better than Avatar. Another show that shares some writers with Avatar is The Dragon Prince. It's still not done yet and it's not perfect, but so far seems to be pretty good.

I do think Avatar helped to bush the boundaries and opened up doors for later shows. Adventure Time is probably the biggest, and I'd say Finn is a fantastic example of a boy growing up and learning to avoid toxicity. That spawned a wave of what some derrogatorily and erroneously refer to as the "Cal Arts" era, which I think are even more great examples of not just positive masculinity, but positive humanity. Steven Universe is probably the most relevant here, but it seems like almost everyone who worked on Adventure Time went on to get a show of their own after, and most of them are pretty good.

Second for Ted Lasso! It shows the “alpha male” side to be fairly ridiculous and not necessary, and shows that positive support, honesty, acceptance, and communication are keys to building better relationships, for both men and women, I might add.

Whoever came up with "I am Kenough" needs all the money.

Yeah, that's right. I had a good conversation with my girlfriend afterwards.

Literally the best movie I've ever seen. I can't recommend it enough.

The books are fantastic too. Highly recommended. If you like audiobooks, I prefer the ones narrated by Patrick Tull.

It's hard for me to want to watch it again as everytime I consider it, my mind just thinks of when the biggest doofus in the business, Luis Carruthers, brought it up in deplorable shorthand, "les mis". What a tumbling, tumbling dickweed.