What do you think the Alien actually is?

I don't think the guys who made the film even know what the Alien is. It has a complex lifespan unlike any other real world creature. I guess you could call it "alien" to us.

A Silicon-based lifeform. Extremely unique from the human perspective, except space is also huge so maybe not as unique as we think.

To me it looked like a bio mechanoid hybrid. Ever sense the early development work on promethious I always thought the alien was a mutated human that fused with his astronaught suit. IE I originally thought the black goo just gave life to inanimate matter. If you look at the transparent dome of the original alien with a skull inside it certainly looks like a suite that came to life. I also thought this was how the space jocky was grown out of its chair. It fused with its chair. Of course when promethious was finally released non of this happened. :/

It's a parasite. I don't know if its canon but this is corroborated in later films show the aliens taking on favorable aspects of the host .

The head reminds me of a hardend Cephalopod biology. I kinda wish they could reboot the series and go to the transparent jellyfish like alien they were originally planning for the original movie.

In retrospect I kinda don't buy the Alien social insect aspect. That is to familiar. I takes away the mysterious nature of the original alien. The alien just seems too hostile to be a social organism. Like I woulden't expect them to cooperate with each other.

It seemed clear to me that the alien is a mutatable organism that takes on the character traits of whatever host it impregnates. The xeno we know running around the ship in this film is a human bred xeno, and it has many human characteristics. With it's bipedal form and size, it's sense of personality with reveling in the surprise of its prey, and even sadistically murdering its prey in rapey kinda ways. I think the xenos you would get from other lifeforms would be all together different beasts. Giants like the Space Jockey, winged flying things on some other planet, burrowing worm monsters like some Tremors, whatever.

I can only conclude from the eggs that something is seeding the universe with bio-weapons, uniquely created to take on the characteristics of whatever finds it so as best to kill them. To what end? Who knows. But having the eggs just drop out of a gigantic bug alien was definitely disappointing.

It's a trump supporter. This is what they naturally evolve into.

It is a vision beyond our imaginations.