“In the first scene of Padayappa (1999), he’s asked, ‘Hey man, who are you?’ and his answer is a four-minute musical number in which he plays the harmonica, flips through the air, oversees a massive martial-arts demonstration, and then morphs into a baby. At the end, the village chief says, ‘Padayappa, that song was excellent,’ at which point the music revs up again, Rajinikanth climbs a 30-foot-tall human tower and smashes open a clay pot, fireworks explode, and the director’s credit flies out of it.”