This exactly. Using something closer to the xenomorphs of Alien, introduces a truly frightening species that is sufficiently different that their kind of intelligence and motivations are believably difficult for Federation humanoids to understand.
I know there are other older fans struggling with this, but I think it’s saving the Gorn and Arena from absurdity.
No matter how compelling the story, TOS Arena’s ridiculous rubber suit Gorn has become one of the most recognized images from the franchise in popular culture.
Even as a child watching the episode in its first run it seemed more like silly monster movie stuff. It didn’t have the quality of truly scary monsters of that era such as the Creature of the Black Lagoon. It wasn’t in any way reaching Roddenberry’s target high value sci-fi standard of Forbidden Planet or even The Cage.
More, with so many later stories of Kirk and other captains welcoming the strange and different, coming to terms with very alien species, we need to be shown why Kirk was so hostile to the Gorn by the time of TOS.
While they could have gone for some other kind of reptilian, I like SNW’s choice to go with a the biology of parasitic R-breeder. Roddenberry’s original concept for the Ferengi was closer to the parasitic bat people of Andromeda than what TNG and DS9 gave us. The updated Gorn can be viewed as incorporating that idea and making them as terrifying.