Weeks earlier than the 96th Academy Awards, Oscars host Jimmy Kimmel instructed The Occasions, “I’m not at all times elegant and pristine.” His opening monologue Sunday mirrored simply that. The late-night comic tackled buzzy headlines — starting from the Hollywood strikes to the Oscar-nominated ”Barbenheimer” powerhouse duo — as he returned for the fourth time to host the trade’s largest evening . He additionally had “Oppenheimer” star and Oscar nominee Robert Downey Jr. in his sights.“That is the very best level of Robert Downey Jr.’s lengthy and illustrious profession,” Kimmel mentioned, “or one of many highest factors.”The digicam shortly panned to the three-time nominee, who has been open about his earlier struggles with drug dependancy. Downey tapped on his nostril, to which Kimmel responded: “Is it too on the nostril? Or is {that a} drug movement he made?”In response to an underwhelming joke from Kimmel about his physique, Downey inspired the comic to wrap up the gag, making a fishing movement. Throughout his opener, Kimmel addressed “Barbie” director Greta Gerwig’s snub, took a dig at Sony’s “Madame Net” and supplied a highlight for “Anatomy of a Fall” canine actor Messi, who brought about a stir in Oscar publicist circles days earlier than the ceremony. With extra digs at finest image nominees “Killers of the Flower Moon,” Robert De Niro and Bradley Cooper, Kimmel’s monologue Sunday was much less pointed than his opener from the 2023 ceremony. Final 12 months he addressed Oscar winner Will Smith‘s controversial slap throughout the 2022 present. “We wish you to really feel secure,” he quipped final 12 months, “and most significantly, we wish me to really feel secure.”The longtime ABC host — whose Oscars internet hosting tenure included that notorious finest image envelope debacle in 2017 — concluded his monologue by addressing the months-long writers’ and actors’ strikes in 2023 that introduced manufacturing and promotion of movie and tv initiatives to a halt. For months, the Writers Guild of America and SAG-AFTRA negotiated with the Alliance of Movement Image and Tv Producers to deal with a number of urgent points, together with residuals and the rising use of synthetic intelligence within the leisure trade. The writers’ strike led to late September 2023, and the actors’ strike led to early November 2023.“We will be pleased with the truth that this lengthy and troublesome work stoppage taught us that this very unusual city of ours, as pretentious and superficial as it may be, at its coronary heart is a union city,” Kimmel mentioned. He added: “It’s not only a bunch of closely botoxed, Hailey Bieber smoothie-drinking… nepo infants with perpetually shivering Chihuahuas. This can be a coalition of robust, hardworking, mentally robust American laborers. Men and women who would 100% for positive die if we even needed to contact the deal with of a shovel.”Crew employees then joined Kimmel for the ultimate moments of his monologue. Because the Oscars viewers rose to their ft, Kimmel vowed to point out solidarity for the below-the-line employees as they endure bargaining. “We are going to stand with you too,” he mentioned. Main as much as the Academy Awards, Kimmel admitted to The Occasions, “I didn’t suppose I might ever do [host the Oscars] once more.”“I did two of them, they usually went effectively — one thing loopy occurred at certainly one of them with a narrative I’ll have for the remainder of my life,” he mentioned in an interview revealed final month. “I understand how a lot work goes into them, so I assumed, ‘Yeah, I don’t essentially wish to do that ever once more.’”Swaying him to return have been initiatives together with “Barbie,” a preferred movie that led a lot of the cultural dialog final 12 months and earned Oscar cred because the Greta Gerwig-helmed movie, one half of the “Barbenheimer” phenomenon, was up for eight classes. And Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer, which was nominated for 13 prizes to guide this 12 months’s again of Oscar contenders. Each movies are within the working for the marquee finest image award. “‘Properly, perhaps I’ll do that once more, as a result of not less than I’ve some extent of reference with everybody,’” Kimmel mentioned. The 96th Academy Awards aired stay on ABC from the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood.