Originally Posted by MacrossFan

I guess I'll take the contrarian view and say Chris Columbus is my favorite. He had the hardest job of all three I think, simply because he had to establish a completely new world. Since Chris had laid the foundation, Alfonso Cuaron and Mike Newell didn't have to establish an entire backstory, and they had a freer hand in maybe conveying the theme of the books, but overall I think they took too many liberties with PoA and GoF. I understand the need for each movie to stand on their own to attract new audiences, but I would have preferred a tighter sense of continuity. I also don't like how details where sacrificed for the sake of movie efficiency. Yeah, they may seem like small details at the time, but they play a bigger role later on in the series.

Overall, from a sense of continuity to faithfulness to the books, I think Chris did it better.