a wide range of filmmakers, ranging from Steven Spielberg and George Lucas to Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino. According to Prince, Kurosawa was "a mentor figure" to an emerging generation of American filmmakers, such as Spielberg and Lucas, who went on to develop the Hollywood blockbuster format in the 1970s. Elements from Seven Samurai have been borrowed by many films. Examples include plot elements in films such as Three Amigos (1986) by John Landis, borrowed scenes in George Miller's Mad Max: Fury Road (2015), and various elements (including visual elements and the way the action, suspense and movement are presented) in the large-scale battle scenes of films such as The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002), The Matrix Revolutions (2003) and numerous Marvel Studios films. The opening action scene (where the hero is introduced in an action scenario unrelated to the rest of the plot) later seen in many action films (such as the James Bond films) has origins in Seven Samurai, with its opening action scene where Kambei poses as a monk to save a boy from a kidnapper. A visual element from Seven Samurai that has inspired a number of films is the use of rain to set the tone for action scenes; examples of this include Blade Runner (1982), The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, and The Matrix Revolutions. Seven Samurai's film editing technique of cutting on motion and the mentor-student dynamics in the plot (also seen in other Kurosawa films) have also been widely adopted by Hollywood blockbusters (such as Marvel films). Sholay (1975), a "Curry Western" Indian film written by Salim–Javed (Salim Khan and Javed Akhtar) and directed by Ramesh Sippy, has a plot that was loosely styled after Seven Samurai. Sholay became the most commercially successful Indian film and revolutionized Hindi cinema. Later Indian films inspired by Seven Samurai include Mani Ratnam's Thalapathi (1991) and the Hindi film China Gate (1998). Director Zack Snyder said, "Bruce [Wayne] is having to go out and sort of ‘Seven Samurai' the Justice League together” in the 2021 film Zack Snyder's Justice League. According to Bryan Young of Syfy Wire, the Marvel Cinematic Universe films The Avengers (2012) and Avengers: Infinity War (2018) also owe "a great debt to" Seven Samurai, noting a number of similar plot and visual elements. Other examples of films that reference Seven Samurai include the Australian science fiction film