I do think the most absurd take on aliens is the one in movies where they want to dominate or destroy us and like others in this thread pointed out, it's a projection of colonialism to think they'd be like that.

The most materially grounded take is probably something like that aliens would have various material constraints to be concerned with and so they would probably want to open up communication, if possible (if they could figure out how to communicate with us in our language), in order to work out what kind of resources we have and how, if at all, those resources can be used by them. And the likelihood is it leaning mutual-benefit exchange of info and resources (sorta like how China operates) because for any humanoid species to get to the point where it can travel vast distances in space, it would need to have cooperation down to a tee. Space does not have the room for error for a bunch of selfish conquerors to be mucking about in it.

Surveillance doesn't seem out of the question, in order to figure out how to communicate with us and to study us from a scientific standpoint. But this angle seems like it'd lean more toward a species of alien that is not humanoid and is different enough from us, there may be no communicating between the two species, even if both wanted to. And at that point, it's sort of irrelevant if aliens are real, since we'd have no way to confirm it anyway. It's also just an angle that, much like religion can be, is potentially a bit egotistical, in thinking that we are more important in the universe than we probably are in reality; a species different enough from us may not even register us as existing in the first place.