“Terminator 2: Judgment Day” established its place 26 years ago among the top feature films ever made. Under the brilliant guidance of director James Cameron, the movie not only set new standards for special effects but flawlessly blended a tale of an apocalyptic event in the near future brought on by robots with a story of a very different family.

Granted, the father in the scenario was emotionally cold, didn’t understand love and focused entirely on his job but that’s not too different from many dads in other feature films focused on family.

Cameron’s script allowed plenty of time for both the sci-fi and human elements to be explored, but after only a few moments the action would be ramped up to cinema-changing levels. This was enough to earn the film six Oscar nominations with four wins. That’s one reason the American Film Institute put “Terminator 2; Judgment Day” at No. 8 on its list of all-time great sci-fi films, behind the likes of “2001: A Space Odyssey,” “Star Wars: Episode IV: A New Hope” and “Alien.”

Those crass enough to only think of movies in terms of dollars and cents can look at how the movie earned more than $516 million around the world. There have been five films released in the franchise — including “Terminator: Genisys” in 2015 — and none have earned as much money as “Terminator 2: Judgment Day.”

And now, that total will go up as a new 3-D version of is being released in select theaters. The film features the best state of the art 3-D because Cameron used the same team that transformed “Titanic” to 3-D, and every frame has been digitally enhanced.

The result is an updated version that already started as a near perfect piece of filmmaking and has been elevated to new heights. Despite having been available on cable, DVD, VHS and in other forms for a quarter century, watching “Terminator 2: Judgment Day” in its new incarnation is like seeing it for the first time.

The film was a follow-up to James Cameron’s “The Terminator,” which he made in 1984 for a mere $6 million dollars, 1/17th the cost of the sequel. The original “Terminator” was a testing ground for Cameron as he established all the basic elements that he would be able to expand on seven years later.

He knew he had an instant film icon with the Terminator as played by actor-of-few-words Arnold Schwarzenegger.

All of that is now shown through a print that jumps off the screen. Generally, 3-D comes across as little more than a gimmick to get moviegoers to pay for the new digital projectors in theaters. This 3-D is so deep and rich that there hasn’t been a movie to use 3-D as such a plus since “Avatar” (another Cameron creation).