Is there a way to disable the starting intro?

There's a checkbox, all by its lonesome, in its own category called Cinematics in the options menu.

Or you could just click.

Carbon016 is right. There is a toggle check box in the effects menu screen I think (it might be with the rest of the graphics options though). This will prevent the opening cinematic from appearing. Alternatively, you can edit your settings files in the game's Windows profile application data directory. There you can even disable all intro videos so that they just get replaced with static logos. It's as simple as replacing some TRUE entries with FALSE. You should only do this if you have experience making these sorts of modifications to settings files though.