It is a myth that that is a myth. The only person to have been exposed to a vacuum and survived was unconscious in about 10 seconds. The only person to have been exposed to a vacuum and died while wearing a monitor was dead in 40 seconds.
Quick, someone watch the movie with a stopwatch!
And where would she have been able to demonstrate this activity? In Return of the Jedi she didn’t even know she had the Force at all, but Luke assured her she did. Thirty years later she is in command of the New Republc’s Resistance, and rather busy strategising. Then we see her in The Last Jedi and we realise she has been training her Force abilities in that intervening gap.
This is a surprise to the audience, yes, but is really perfectly logical.
I imagine there will be details of her training in a novel or comic series, if you really care.
If I didn’t know that they brought back Carrie Fisher for Ep 7, I wouldn’t have figured it out by watching the movie. Like with my personal opinion of Gillian Anderson failing to resemble Scully now so many years later after not having portrayed her as she aged, I didn’t see Leia in Ep 7 - I saw an aged Carrie Fisher attempting to play Leia unconvincingly because there was basically no connection between the characters’ physical appearance other than the fact they were played by the same person. Somehow some people think this means that they automatically look exactly the same.
So as to head off all the people who will decry me for having such a “sexist” opinion, Harrison Ford looked even less like Han Solo. I saw Harrison Ford impersonating Han Solo, not Han Solo.
You’re saying that Leia wouldn’t age the way Carrie Fisher did? This is implausible to you? Seriously?
Was that person Force-sensitive? We may need to run some trials on Jedi to see how that affects survival.
That is why James Bond keeps getting new actors, the guys age out of the role. But I agree Star Wars fans would throw a tantrum if main actors were recast. Solo did OK but did not make money like most SW movies
Anyone playing Luke, Leia, or Han would have either looked different from the characters we were familiar with, or would have looked unrealistically young for the elapsed time, or both. The best you can do is to find someone the appropriate amount older who looks like they would have aged in the same way as the original actors, and the easiest way to do that by far is to use the original actors.
It wouldn’t have been so jarring if they had made a new Star Wars movie every few years with those actors, so we could see the gradual progression of age, and gotten continuity. But that’s not what Lucas wanted to do, and by the time Disney had the helm (and they did want to do that), that ship had [del]sailed[/del]hyperjumped.